My One St. Louis Grave

One of our regular stops when we visited my mother's family in Washington DC, was at my grandfather's sister, Aunt Rose Shapiro, on Missouri Avenue. Aunt Rose, who was a bit younger than my grandfather, was widowed before I was born. She and Uncle Max had three daughters, Bea, Jean (known to everyone as Tootsie) and Ann.

I assume that Bea was named after my grandfather's paternal gradmother, as was my mother. Tootsie carried the name of my grandfather's maternal grandmother (for whom we have MtDNA results - thank you Ruth!) and I assume that Ann was named for my grandfather's mother Anna Kugel who died no later than 1904. I am not sure if these names were shared by Uncle Max' family or if the girls had middle names that I am not aware of.

Bea and Tootsie both lived in the DC area. We often visited with Tootsie and her family, so I knew her well. I met Bea maybe twice - never her husband and children. But Ann lived in St. Louis and we never saw her. Her married name is Garland (previously Gallant) and she has a daughter and a son, neither of whom I ever met. The son has what must be a unique name and I tried to contact him a few years ago, to no response.

Ann died in 1974 at age 55. Cancer.

So finding myself in St Louis this morning, I went to her grave. It is part of a family plot - her husband's family - but he himself is not there.

Perhaps I'll try her son again.

Ann in the foreground, behind her are her husband's relatives.

There Could Have Been A Lesson Here - May Still Be

About ten days ago, I received a note from someone I will call "F," referring to the GEDmatch kit of my second cousin Susan. My email is on her kit and F thought he was emailing Susan herself.

So this is the sum total of what F wrote:

Looking at the surnames on family finder I got an idea how we might be related.

The mother of my grandfather on my maternal line was called Karolina Bauer

and conceived with an unknown man Joseph Bauer. Does this fit with anything in your family tree?

Bauer is my father's maternal grandfather's name and twenty years ago, I acquired copies of all the availlable Bauer vital records from Kunszentmiklos. I put them into my genealogy database and composed a simple html display which begins thus:

I looked for F's Joseph with a daughter Karolina and found nothing, but when I tried "Lina" I found this 1882 marriage record:

The groom is Gaspar Heisler, 25, the son of Jakov and Czilli Heisler. The bride is Lina Bauer, 29, daughter of Jozsef Bauer and Betti Heisler. My correspondent F had not mentioned the name Heisler, which was common to both the bride and the groom, nor did he say anything about geography.

F's match with Susan is undeniable. FTDNA shows a total of 56 cM with a longest segment of 26 cM. The longest segment is impressive, even if the total is not. FTDNA says they are suggested second-fourth cousins. But Susan is one of nine descendants of my great-grandmother Regina Bauer in our generation who have tested, plus my father's brother and sister and a grandson of Regina's brother. And none of those seemed to match F on Susan's long segment.

I found that F is also on GEDmatch and he only matches Susan, Aunt Betty and Uncle Bob, whose matches with F are small. And not on the same segment as Susan's, which is 25.8 cM.

At first it struck me as odd that Susan had this 26 cM segment with F, which none of the rest of us shared. But it isn't really. Is it very unusual that Regina passed this particular segment to one of her three children? Hardly. Or that it came to Susan but not Shabtai? Not at all.

So I began preparing my soapbox to make the case yet again for testing everyone because you  never know what might show up. But before that I reported back to F.

F confirmed that his Karolina was indeed called Lina. But his Lina was born in 1900, while ours was a twenty-nine year old bride in 1882. He doesn't know the geography but is making inquiries. 

F's Karolina may indeed be part of our family and Susan's shared segment may indeed be from the Bauer's. But I am not at all sure, so the soapbox is both relevant and conditional. But no occasion to preach about "test everyone!" should be ignored.
 
While I was at it, I ran the GEDmatch Matching Segments for both Susan and F to see who else matches both of them on that segment. There are five who match that segment - plus two more, a brother and sister - who match F on the segment but match Susan of about double the size of the segment. I wrote to the six matches. Two responded so far. They don't know anything helpful.

Housekeeping notes

I'm on my way to the US now. I'd be pleased to see any of you at the following three events.

30 April 2018, 7:00 – Jewish SIG of the St. Louis Genealogical Society, Holocaust Museum & Learning Center Theater, 12 Millstone Drive, St Louis Missouri
Using Genetics for Genealogy Research
(Lessons in Jewish DNA – One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey)

2 May 2018, 6:00 – Jewish Genealogical Society of Kansas City, Johnson County Central Resource Library, Carmack Room, 9875 West 87th Street, Overland Park Kansas Lessons in Jewish DNA – One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey

8 May 2018, 7:00 – Youngstown Area Jewish Federation and the Mahoning County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society,  Jewish Community Center of Youngstown, 505 Gypsy Lane, Youngstown Ohio
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?
(because genealogy is more than names and dates)

How Close Are We - GEDmatch and Known Matches

A few days ago, Liza Lizarraga called our attention on Facebook to a year-old blog about the "generations" column in the GEDmatch "one-to-many" results. In her blog GenGenAus, Cate Pearce tells us how the generations that GEDmatch shows us line up with her own reality. I had never seen this blog or any other form of this analysis.

Above are my own one-to-many matches with four people in my Pikholz project. I am not sure how I am related to them, but I call them "my fourth cousins". The first two are known to have multiple Pikholz ancestors, but the approximations that GEDmatch shows (in the red box) do not help much.

 
Yet some people want them to be useful - even definitive - and the occasional poster on Facebook or in discussion groups will ask "What does 4.7 generations mean, exactly?" Well, there is no "exactly" once you get past parent/child relationships. And beyond that, Cate shows us what her actual family matches look like:

Gen 2.3 1C1R (first cousins once removed)

Gen 2.5 1C1R (first cousins once removed) Again, this makes sense: my cousin is a generation older than me, his grandparents, which is 2 generations, are my great-grandparents, which is 3 generations. Therefore, the Gedmatch Generation is calculated as being between 2 and 3 = 2.5

Gen 2.6 1C1R (first cousins once removed) 2C (second cousins)

Gen 2.9 2C (second cousins)

Gen 3.0 2C (second cousins)
This is the ideal scenario, with the common shared ancestors for me and my match both being 3 generations back.

I figured it would be useful to do something similar for endogamous populations and felt that it would be more user-friendly to put it in a structure like Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project. So with Blaine's kind permission, I prepared an analysis of my 1184 known family relationships, shown in the chart below. (There are more data points on the way, waiting to get a few more kits onto GEDmatch.)

This chart has no claim on precision. The averages do not include those matches which do not show in the traditional one-to-many search on GEDmatch, what we call "the zeroes."

Some do not show up because they do not meet the conditions for a match. Some are good matches but have only a single segment and for some reason GEDmatch does not display these. Some are matches but do not fit into the 2000-match limit which GEDmatch imposes.

Multiple known relationships are listed by the closest one and there is no special acknowledgement of my double second cousins.

I also show the sample size, which does not include the "zeroes."

I would be really pleased to have some more data. Anyone in the endogamous community who wishes to join in can download the simple Excel form at www.pikholz.org/GenerationsForm.xlsx. Needless to say, privacy will be maintained. And you do not need to identify the specific matches, just the relationships.

        

Housekeeping notes

I just took DNA from the wife of my boss forty years ago. She told me back then that she is a Pikholz descendant and now I know that her third-great-grandparents are Mordecai Pikholz and his wife Taube. I still don't know how Mordecai and my second-great-grandfather Isak Fischel are connected. Maybe brothers. I have been after her to give me DNA for years.

I'd be pleased to see any of you at the following three events.

30 April 2018, 7:00 – Jewish SIG of the St. Louis Genealogical Society, Holocaust Museum & Learning Center Theater, 12 Millstone Drive, St Louis Missouri
Using Genetics for Genealogy Research
(Lessons in Jewish DNA – One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey)

2 May 2018, 6:00 – Jewish Genealogical Society of Kansas City, Johnson County Central Resource Library, Carmack Room, 9875 West 87th Street, Overland Park Kansas
Lessons in Jewish DNA – One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey

8 May 2018, 7:00 – Youngstown Area Jewish Federation and the Mahoning County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society,  Jewish Community Center of Youngstown, 505 Gypsy Lane, Youngstown Ohio
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?
(because genealogy is more than names and dates) 

JRI-Poland still needs considerable funds for the new indexing projects. Among the towns I am responsible for, Skalat and Skole are far from their goals, but Rozdol, Komarno, Zbarazh and Podkamen need funds as well. See instructions for donations here - and don't forget to say which projects you are supporting. And let me know what you have contributed.

A New Twist In The "Joseph Leisor" Story

The background
Three years ago, I introduced readers to the story of Joseph Leisor Pikholz, probably a second cousin of my grandfather. Then last year, after we received access to the latest batch of Skalat records, I discussed Joseph Leisor's father Simon, after his death record appeared with a date years after I assumed he was dead.

Joseph's wife's Katie's unmarked
grave in Upper Darby PA

Joseph, who had four children in Philadelphia during the period 1901-1906, disappears entirely about that time. His children show up in orphanges or living with his in-laws in 1910, after the wife died (in 1909), so I assumed that Joseph had died.

Joseph's older sister Dora had gone to the US with my grandfather's first cousin Sara Frankel, who had ended up in Denver, so I had this cockamamie theory that Joseph had gone to Denver to join family and look for work. I brashly predicted to Steve Pickholtz - who had taken the lead on this inquiry - that we would find that Joseph had died in Denver or en route, probably while his wife was still alive. I even considered that he had died even before the youngest child was born and that "Leonard J." would turn out to be in memory of Joseph Leisor.

That theory blew up when I found that Joseph was definitely alive in 1909-1910, involved in some matters that are better not spoken of. There is also an indication that he had spent some time in Pittsburgh before that.

Then I found this in Ancestry's collection of World War One Draft Registration Cards:

Joseph Lewis Pickholtz, born 1 October 1881, registered for the draft in Kansas City Missouri in 1918. He is married to "Elsie L," is in the junk business and is "tall," brown-haired and missing three fingers on his right hand. "Lewis" is a reasonable substitute for "Leisor" and the birth year is correct, though not the full date.

And then he disappears again. Neither he nor Elsie shows up in the 1920 census or anyplace else. I wondered if he was on the way to Denver.

The new twist
As I mentioned in my last few blogs, I am speaking in St. Louis and Kansas City in four weeks and I will have some time in Kansas City in between. So I wondered out loud if there is something I can do while there to advance my research and mentioned the draft card to the organizers. Nancy Reicher took up the challenge and sent me this:
 

This looks like our Joseph, though there is no identifying information other than the middle initial. Getting married. In Golden Colorado, half an hour from Denver. In 1915, three years before the Kansas City draft card.

Is Lena Lipchitz the same person as "Elsie L" - or yet another wife?

And I don't see any Lipchitz or similar in either Denver/Golden or Kansas City in either the 1910 or 1920 census.

So maybe my instincts were correct. He had gone to Denver. Now what? Perhaps I can find a Lipchitz family in the Denver area, who knows this family. Working on it.