I told her that I was going to send her an invitation on the site to share genomes so that we could see exactly where her and my wife match. I told her I could plug that information into a spreadsheet I made that helps me keep track of the matches and to also keep track of possible common ancestors from those matches (I need to post about that at some point.) She shared her genomes and I entered her data.

I messaged her back and told her she was pretty lucky. She matched my wife on the 2nd Genome and it happened to be the same area as another match that we had determined a possible common ancestor. Based on the data, this ancestor was more than likely her ancestor, too. I sent her a link to my family tree site to John C Lant and told her that he was probably her ancestor. She was very happy since she said she didn’t have any other ancestors. Helping her out made us feel really good and I’m glad we could shed some more light on her mystery. It’s amazing what DNA can do.

If you’d like to read more about her situation, she sent me a link to a news story about herself titled A tale of an abandoned baby, a dime and a Lawrence laundromat. 

Also, on the DNA front. I ended up ordering 2 more 23andMe kits during their price drop. I planned to give one to my father and one to my father-in-law to help give us more information on our genealogical matches and also get more info on their Y and mtDNA lines.

I chose the two fathers as they would give us the most information. For example, my mother would give me almost no more information (genealogically) since she would only have mtDNA info, which I also have myself. Even though my father has the same Y-DNA line as me, he will give me his mtDNA line through my grandmother. My father-in-law will give us  more information since my wife does not get his Y-DNA line so we will get that and also his mtDNA line. Another helpful thing is that we will now be able to split our results between mother and father since we will have one of them. This will help figure out which side of the family a DNA match comes from. My wife also has some Native American composition and we’re curious to see which side that came from.

Have you had any interesting things happen with your DNA results?

• Start building my family’s stories. There is so much to work with from my ancestry that there are stories everywhere. While I’m not horrible at storytelling, it’s definitely not one of my strengths.
• More video. I hope to record some basic vlog-type videos on YouTube and also join some Google Hangouts.
• The Zalewski Project. I hope to collect more data for the site. I’m currently in the middle of the 1910 census, but I’d like to get some other data types on there, too.
• Find Frank Zalewski. One of  my genealogy research goals is to finally track down Frank’s place of birth. The last big find was finding his marriage record, but I had no luck finding his birth in the area.
• Interview and talk to my grandparents. I only have one pair of grandparents left, my maternal ones, and they’re getting up there in age and mindset. I’d like to sit down with them and talk. The recent access to photos from that side of the family will help me find things to talk about. I also plan to just out and ask my grandfather about World War II even though he’s never talked about it. Worst thing that will happen is he will say no.
• Visit a genealogy conference. As I said earlier, my RootsTech visit fell through. I thought about attending the Southern California Genealogy Society Jamboree in June but after looking at my flight and hotel options, I just can’t spend that kind of money right now. I especially wanted to visit “DNA Day” over there, but unless someone can let me use a spare bedroom, I don’t think it’s happening (hint hint). I plan to find some closer ones that I can drive to around here. With my closeness to Chicago, there should be something.
• Organize my files. Mostly my physical files. My digital files are somewhat organized already. We are currently working on adding a room to our basement that will be both the computer room and the kid’s playroom. This should open up more room in this house and make this job much easier.

Do you have any goals for the rest of the year?

Image: seasonal wanderer @ flickr

As always, a lot of the photographs are unlabeled, but I can tell who a few of the people probably are. Plus, I am fortunate that my maternal grandparents are still with us and hopefully we can find some time to sit down with them to discuss some of items.

I am currently in the process of scanning them, so you can probably expect an increase of “Way Back Wednesday” posts.

Here is one nice photo from the dozens I have scanned.

circa 1919-1920. Click for larger. Much, much larger.

I’m almost positive that the couple on the left side of the photo are my great-grandparents, Arthur & Madora (Last) Thielke. Most of the photos are not labeled, but based on other photos and face recognition, I’m pretty certain it’s them. I will confirm with my grandfather at some point. My guess is this is either their wedding (since it’s dated around 1920) or another important event. I have no clue who the other couple is, but it’s safe to say that they are probably a relation to Arthur and/or Madora.

I knew that If I put aside some money throughout the year I’d easily be able to take myself there. I even talked it over with my wife and she said it’d be fine. Well, things don’t always go to plan, do they?

The first big wrench that was thrown into the gears was the birth of my son. I love him to bits, but his timing was just a bit off. I didn’t want to leave my wife with two kids under 3 for a few days, eight hours is probably enough during work days. The other wrench was that my wife will actually be out of town during those days, too and I need to watch my daughter. So, my plan is to hopefully hit up RootsTech 2014 next March or April. (Right, honey?)

Fortunately, in this digital age, RootsTech is streaming many of their presentations online and if it’s anything like last year they will be available on-demand after that. You can still access the videos from RootsTech 2012 which are still extremely interesting. (Warning: auto-playing video)

For all of you that are going to RootsTech 2013, have a great time and I hope to see you next year!

One amazing photo was of him and a group of other men from November 1945 in Mannheim, Germany. The building behind the group has the words “504 QM BN Headquarters” on it. I quickly translated that to the “504th Quartermasters Battalion.” As much searching as I did, I could not find any info on that specific battalion. I posted a query over on /r/Military on reddit and got some help, but nothing solid. Fortunately, on the back of the photo were the names of all of the men. I searched for all of them and didn’t find much besides some generic obituaries, but again, no solid info.

Click for larger. My grandfather is 2nd from the left in the 2nd row.

My mom brought over another photo album and some newspaper clippings. One of the clippings was from a local paper in 1944 talking about my grandfather, a local man, and his service information. This clipping lists him as being part of the “748th F. A. Bn. Hq. Btry.” out of Camp Shelby, Mississippi which I assume is the “748th Field Artillery Battalion Headquarters Battery.” Again, no solid leads on that information, but it is another avenue of research.

The research trail continues. I may have some time to sit down with my grandparents, though they are slowing down in their old age, and maybe ask him about his service. Rumor has it that he was working on getting all of his military info in one place before he needed heart surgery a few years ago. Maybe he’s waiting for someone to ask him now.

It seems that a lot of families from this area of Wisconsin immigrated from that area, which is now mostly in Poland, so I’m in luck. I used this collection to find a few records so far. I found my 3rd-great-grandparent’s marriage record and my 3rd-great-grandfather’s baptism record (I’m pretty sure.) Keep in mind that the towns and parishes are not named the same as they were in the 1800s, so you can’t just go to Google Maps. Don’t worry, I’ve done some of the hard work for you and will show you how to find the records you need. Though, this won’t do all of the browsing record by record and trying to determine what someone wrote in German on old, ripped paper from 1840 for you, but maybe for a few bucks I can do that for you, too.

Some of the Pommern church records available.

The key in all of this is an amazing site called Kartenmeister. They describe themselves:

Welcome to the most comprehensive database of its kind in the world. It contains 93537 locations with over 38.691 name changes once, and 5,500 twice and more.  Included in this database are the following provinces: Eastprussia, including Memel, Westprussia, Brandenburg, Posen, Pomerania, and Silesia. It currently list most towns or points, points being: Mills, some bridges, battlefields, named trees, cenotaphs etc.

Let’s say, using my research, that you find an immigration record that indicates your family were originally from “Naugard.” You go to Google Maps but find out that there is no Naugard in that area of Europe. (Funny story, I just tried it and Google does bring up the current city, but don’t expect that to work on every one.) You would go to Kartenmeister and type “Naugard” into the “German City Name” field and hit “Submit.” It would bring up a listing of matching items, 5 in this case. Usually the first item is the one you need, but not always so look around.

Kartenmeister Search Results – View Page

Once inside of one of the items it gives you all kinds of info on it, including the current Polish name (Nowogard in this case.) There is also a handy-dandy link to Google Maps set to the coordinates of the item. A really helpful field for what we’re doing is either the “Lutheran Parish” or the “Catholic Parish,” depending on which one you need. This will tell you what parish you need to look for in the FamilySearch records. Bigger towns usually have their own parish, but some of the smaller towns go to another area.

One other helpful part of this info screen is the “View Emails of Interested People” button. This will take you to a page of people researching families in this town showing surnames and their contact info. You can also add your name to the list, though be careful, it’s a bit clunky so make sure everything is correct before submitting.

So, for our example, the “Lutheran Parish” is labeled as “Naugard, 1905″ which is the town itself. I assume the year is when the info was found. I didn’t find any records in that parish for my family, so the next step was for me to go to this location in Google Maps and check out other nearby towns to see what other parishes are nearby. I tried a few and then decided to test my luck on a city to the north called Płoty today. How do I find the original German name? Kartenmeister!

Go back to Kartenmeister and type in the current name into the “Polish City Name” field. It seems you don’t need to worry about the special accented characters as I think they ignore them, but your mileage may vary. I plopped “Ploty” into the box and submitted it and it returned “Plathe” as the first entry. Clicking on that, it told me the parish was “Plathe 1905.”

Fortunately, FamilySearch did have this parish’s records. You’ll need to find the “County/Kreis” for the parish, which for Plathe was Regenwalde. You’ll use this on FamilySearch’s record viewer once you get into the “Pommern” area. Then look for “Regenwalde.”

There were three separate entries for Plathe: “Evangelische Kirche Plathe”, “Evangelische Kirche Plathe: Heydebreck”, and “Evangelische Kirche Plathe: Neuenhagen, Lietzow, Mackfitz, Mittelhagen, Altenhagen.” Those are just separate towns, I think, for that parish. Maybe them kept them in different areas, I don’t know. Out of sheer luck I found their record in the main Plathe collection, which opened up more research avenues including finding Johann’s baptism. I have yet to find his wife Charlotte’s baptism record, but I keep looking.

Snippet of their marriage record

Not all parishes and towns are that easy. Take my great-great-grandmother’s baptism record, for instance. Records indicate she was born in “Storkow, Pommerania.” A quick search of “Storkow” on Kartenmeister shows multiple Storkows with only a few having records available. I am currently browsing through one of the collections page by page and noting all surnames that may be involved. It’s a bit tedious, but when you find that original record, it’s all worth it.

The problem there is that people are comparing it to Twitter and Facebook when it’s like comparing apples to kiwis . To paraphrase something I read, Facebook is for your existing friends (close friends, grandma, etc), Twitter is for sharing information on current events, and Google+ is for your passions. That’s the key.

I, like almost everyone else, signed into Google+ when it first appeared and found it boring and quiet. I admit that this was before they added a lot of the features that make it what it is today. It’s actually pretty true that not many of my friends are on it, but the ones that are on it aren’t the reason I enjoy it. I find it much more useful for interacting with like-minded people. I’ve collaborated and chatted more about my passions on Google+ in the last few months than on Facebook and Twitter combined over their lifetimes.

So far, the key for me has been the Google+ communities. Browse around and find one that interests you. I’ve joined unrelated communities from Genetic Genealogy to Doctor Who to jQuery to SimCity. I even set up a community myself for the purpose of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Genealogy (self promo!) and it’s already creating some good discussion and contacts.

So, my point is, don’t believe random Facebook commentors (trust them as much as YouTube commentors) and look around Google+ for your passions and start interacting. You’ll be surprised.

While you’re there, look me up.

Today we’re going to look into the last set of DNA that you can use in your research, Autosomal DNA. This is DNA which is inherited from the autosomal chromosomes. Humans have 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes (the X chromosome and the Y chromosome). Each pair of autosomes is inherited the same way.

For each pair of autosomes, you received one from your mother and one from your father. Before the autosomes were sent to you, they were randomly jumbled in a process called recombination. Your parents also received their autosomes from their parents who also recombined them. So, your autosomes are random mixtures of all of your ancestors autosomes. All branches of your ancestry contribute to your Autosomal DNA. Obviously, the more distant the ancestor is, the less you share with them. Closer relatives will share larger fragments with you compared to distant relatives.

For example, this chart below shows, on average, how much autosomal DNA you share with specific relatives:

Public domain Image from Wikimedia Commons. Click for larger.

This is the DNA that most places use to match you up with potential cousins using Relative Finder from 23andMe or Family Finder from Family Tree DNA. If you have shared genomes with people on 23andMe, you can go to “Ancestry Labs” on the menu and choose “Family Inheritance: Advanced” to see which parts of your autosomal DNA you share, if any.

GEDMatch.com can also compare your Autosomal DNA and show you, in great detail, where you match with other individuals.

I hope you learned something. Remember, DNA testing is much more useful with an already sourced genealogy paper trail. Otherwise it will be very difficult to see how you relate to your DNA matches.

I had the YDNA and mtDNA down pretty good in my head. One is paternal, one is maternal, and so on. Then after I submitted my info to GEDMatch,  I saw the “Compare your X-chromosome FTDNA or 23andMe result with one other result in our database” option. Ok, so what exactly does the X Chromosome tell me and how do I inherit it?

The X Chromosome is passed down by both parents, though only daughters get it from their father as the father sends over the Y Chromosome to their son instead. This makes for a weird line of inheritance through your ancestry. A good way to figure this out is to use a fan chart. I was able to find a chart on this helpful post over at The Genetic Genealogist about the X Chromosome. Here is my chart, filled in with my ancestors, telling me where I could have inherited my X Chromosome:

Click for larger

The charts can be found over at The Genetic Genealogist, though I had to increase the image size a bit to make it easier to work with. There is also a chart showing the estimated percentage of the X Chromosome that you get from each ancestor.

I obviously don’t have all of the boxes filled in as I don’t have those ancestors figured out, yet. On my research over at GEDMatch, I see that I match a few people on my X Chromosome. So, in theory, these people would be related to me through those ancestors in the chart above (or beyond, in the same sequence.) My French-Canadian ancestry is included in the chart above, so I undoubtedly will have a lot of connections through there as I always do. It’s not a silver bullet by any means, but it does help you narrow down your search if you find a connection, especially along with other matches in other DNA areas or common surnames.

Again, there is another very quick and helpful video on the X Chromosome over at the University of Utah’s Molecular Genealogy page. I would definitely watch it.

Next time we will talk about the other 22 Chromosomes or the Autosomal DNA.

There are four main types of DNA that can be used for genealogy purposes: Autosomal, X Chromosome, Y Chromosome, and Mitochondrial DNA. Each type of DNA is passed down from parents to children in different ways, allowing different patterns or different signs to help in your research. Here is a quick video that I found very useful explaining the four types:

My DNA lines. Click for larger version.

Most people that have taken DNA tests are somewhat familiar with what seem to be the “big two”: Y Chromosome (YDNA) and Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). These are the two types of DNA that literally shoot out in opposite directions from you through your ancestry, though females can only trace mtDNA. They also give you the Haplogroups that you may have seen, one Maternal and one Paternal. Mine are H11a and R1a1a, respectively. They use this to determine where your deep ancestry hails from.

YDNA is passed down from from fathers to sons. The father is the one that determines the sex of a child by either giving an X Chromosome, for female, or a Y Chromosome, for male, which is why only males can use the YDNA information. The YDNA information traces your patrilineal line (or your surname line) back thousands of years since the Y Chromosome does not change very often as it is passed down.

mtDNA is passed down only from mother to all of her children. It works in a similar way to YDNA in that you can use it to trace your matrilineal line back thousands of years (your mother’s mother’s mother and so on.)

Here is another quick video explaining mtDNA. To view a similar video on YDNA, visit the Molecular Genealogy site at the University of Utah as I can’t find a version that I can embed.

View Part 3 for an overview of the X Chromosome and how to determine which ancestors you may get it from.