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)