Wendy and Carolyn

About a week ago, I received an inquiry about a week ago from a woman named Wendy who begins:

Hi Israel,

I am trying through a process of elimination to figure out my mom’s fathers side. Through Gedmatch, there are 3 relatives that you tested who have matches with my mom. She doesn’t know who her father is but she is 20+% Ashkenazi.

She gave me her mother Carolyn's GEDmatch kit number and the three of my kits that she matches and the chromosomes where the matches occur. I didn't pay much attention to the three people she mentioned but went straight to Carolyn's match list where I saw that she actually matches thirty of my kits.

In looking at the list of thirty, I saw that one was a match of nearly 12.5 cM with my father's second cousin Shabtai. This would be on my grandmother's mother's Hungarian side. I did a chromosome browser for that part of my family and quickly saw that all the action is on chromosome 21, at the far right end.

To remind everyone, Susan is my second cousin, Aunt Betty is my father's sister and Sarajoy is one of my sisters. So this is a nice family group. Not a large segment and probably not much use for someone looking for a birth father, but it does hint at geography as we know our Bauers were in the same area since the 1700s.

So I reported to Wendy:

This group points to my pgm's mother's family. her father is a Bauer from Apostag and Kunszentmiklos in Hungary and her mother is a Stern from Kalocsa.

I don't have more but that will give you some direction.

I also saw in the match list that Carolyn has matches with two second cousins on my father's father's (Galician) side, Rhoda and Roz who are first cousins to each other. But there were no matches with other of my Pikholz second cousins. There is, however, a match with my third cousin Pinchas. Pinchas is a third cousin to Rhoda and Roz as I am but is also a third cousin to them in a direction having nothing to do with me - their Zwiebel and Lewinter families, also from the same area of east Galicia. (It could be a Kwoczka match, but no other second cousins of mine appear.)

So I did a chromosome browser for just those three. And got this:

OK. So Carolyn has a match with the Zwiebels or the Lewinters.

Then I realized that this too is chromosome 21 and that a chromosome browser for both groups gives me this:

This really looks like one group, especially when I note that my start point (41,302,925) is the same as Shabtai while my end point (45,746,864) is the same as Pinchas.

I triangulated the two groups just in case one matchs Carolyn of her mother's side and one on her father's side. (This was unlikely as Carolyn's mother has no known Jewish ancestry.) The two groups triangulated perfectly.

So it appears clear that someplace back in genealogical time there is common ancestry between Shabtai's Hungarian Bauers or Sterns and the east Galician Zwiebels or the Lewinters. Back in time, but recent enough that segments in the 11-13 cM range were preserved in both groups.

Here's to endogamy. Even if it doesn't help Carolyn very much.

Carolyn and Wendy live in Maryland and both plan to attend my presentation at JGS Maryland at 1:30 on the twenty-fourth. That's at Hadassah, 3723 Old Court Road, Suite 205. Come join us. It's my one non-DNA talk other than Seattle. Maybe they'll meet their cousin Pinchas, if he comes.

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt:

What We Know

vs

 What We Can Prove

Housekeeping notes
I'm off to the US for the next four weeks. GRIP, the IAJGS Conference, programs in half-a-dozen places, some private mentoring on Y-DNA and meeting with a few relatives I haven't seen in forever.

Perhaps the most exciting thing will be meeting a male-line descendant of the Pikkel family from Vajnag, which is across the river from Vyshkovo. If you have forgotten the significance of that, review this blog from six weeks ago. I'll have a DNA test kit with me.

I'll blog as I can.