The Mitochondrial DNA of My (Other) Great-Grandmothers

Following my recent discussion of the near-extinction of the mitochondrial DNA (U1b1) of my mother's maternal great-grandmother Etta Bryna, let's have a look at my other great-grandmothers.

Chana Kugel, my mother's paternal grandmother,

One of my second cousins on that side did a MtDNA test, so we know that Chana's haplogroup is R0a4. There are sixty-four people who have a perfect MtDNA match

Chana had two sons, my grandfather and Uncle Frank, who (being male) did not pass on any MtDNA.

The younger of Chana's two daughters, Aunt Rose, had three daughters. The eldest had two sons and a daughter and the daughter had only two sons. Aunt Rose's middle daughter had a son (who has declined to talk to me, even though we have a DNA match on Ancestry) and a daughter I know nothing about. Aunt Rose's third daughter had two children but no grandchildren.

Chana's first born, Aunt Mary, had three daughters and a son. The eldest had two daughters and two sons and one of the daughters has no children. The other daughter had eight children, six of them girls. One has two daughters, each of whom has one daughter. Three others have one daughter each. Of those one has only sons, and two are not married, but one is engaged. So Aunt Mary eldest daughter has at least three descendants who may keep the mitochondrial DNA going.

Aunt Mary's middle daughter died at age 20, with no children.

Aunt Mary's youngest daughter had two daughters and each of those has a granddaughter from a daughter.

So we have at present five carriers of Chana's mitochondrial DNA through Aunt Mary and maybe one from Aunt Rose. We know that Chana herself had two or three brothers, but do not know of sisters. Her mother's maiden name is unknown.

Regina (Rivka) Bauer, my father's maternal grandmother

This great-grandmother had two daughters. One had one daughter who had two sons and a daughter - but the daughter has no children.

The other, my grandmother, had two sons and a daughter and the daughter had only sons. The daughter (my aunt) did an MtDNA test and the haplogroup is H10a1b. She has twenty-four perfect matches.

So Regina's mitochondrial DNA is gone. She had four sisters. One died at age thirty and married but we know nothing about children. I visited her grave in Hungary two years ago and it mentions the husband (in both Hungarian and Hebrew) but no mention of children, so I am guessing there weren't any.

Another sister lived in Pittsburgh. She had a daughter, but my grandmother , who knew her well, never mentioned her son but not that daughter, so I assume the daughter died young.

The other two were killed in the Holocaust in their sixties. We have no knowledge of children.

Regina's mother, Fani/Feige Stern, had two sisters that we know of. One had four sons. The other had two sons and five daughters. One of the daughters died at age five and we know nothing about the other four. Feige Stern's mother was a Grunwald and her mother was a Hercz.

So for all practical purposes, we assume that Regina's mitochondrial DNA is gone. Or at least not accessible.

Jutte Leah Kwoczka, my father's paternal grandmother

Nearly ten years ago, the son of my grandfather's middle sister did a MtDNA test for me. The haplogroup is V7a. He had no exact matches but there were thirty-odd one step away. It occured to me that perhaps there had been a personal mutation - he or his mother - so I asked the granddaughter of my grandfather's eldest sister to do the test as well. I was right. She matched all those others. There are now 128 exact matches.

Jutte Leah had ten children: three sons who died in infancy or childhood, three sons with descendants, one son with no descendants and three daughters. Aunt Becky (#5), Aunt Mary (#6) and Aunt Bessie (#8) all were married with children. Aunt Becky had a son and a daughter and the daughter had a daughter with no children. She is the one who did the MtDNA test for me. But the mitochondrial DNA goes no further.

Aunt Mary had a daughter and two sons. Until recently, we had though that the daughter had no children, but we have learned that she had a son who was adopted out. He has been positively identified but there was no one to pass on the MtDNA.

Aunt Bessie had two daughters and a son. One daughter had no children; the other had a son and a daughter and the daughter has only a son.

So none of Jutte Leah's descendants can pass on her mitochondrial DNA. Jutte Leah herself had three brothers but no sisters that we know of. her mother's maiden name is Pollak.

Does any of this matter? I don't really know.

Ruth: Our Mothers, Our Fathers, Our Cousins

Ruth
DNA results are in for my cousin Ruth.

I think this is the one!

Our late mothers are first cousins and and both are named for their great-grandmother Basya Gordon. Though Ruth is quite close to me in age, I am not sure we ever met more than twice. Once was when we spent my sixth birthday in New York - an event made memorable because Cousin Bessie gave me a Mr. Potato Head. The other was the bar mitzvah nearly sixty years ago of Ruth's first cousin Mickey in DC.

Ruth's grandmother is the older sister of my grandfather.

I have just begun testing on my mother's side and Ruth is one of three to test, aside from two of my sisters and me. The other two are my first cousin Kay (our mothers are sisters) and Ruth's first cousin Judy. We have one more test being processed - that one is on my grandmother's side and should help divide the matches between my mother's two sides.

Ruth's Family Finder results have given us information of interest in several different directions.

Everyone in the bottom row has done a Family Finder test.

MtDNA
In addition to the Family Finder, which I'll talk about below, Ruth also did an MtDNA test. That would be the line leading up through Gershon Kugel's wife Zelda. We received the results a month ago. Her haplogroup is R0a4.

Ruth has nine exact MtDNA matches and four more that are one step away. Now that we have her Family Finder results, I looked to see if any of those are close matches. (Three of the nine exact matches have not done Family Finder tests.)

Of the ones who have, most do not match Ruth at all and a few are remote matches. One of the "one-step-away" group is a "third cousin - fifth cousin." As it happens, this is someone I know as a researcher and who is a Facebook friend as well. There is nothing obvious between these two women that would account for a good Family Finder match, but we'll exchange information and see if anything turns up. Of course, the closeness in the Family Finder match me be unrelated to the MtDNA match.

Cyndi
When Judy's results came in about six weeks ago, I was surprised to see that her first match after my sister Sarajoy and me, even before my first cousin Kay, was Cyndi Norwitz. Cyndi is a known fifth cousin of mine on my father's maternal side (Zelinka, from Slovakia) and has no known connections to my mother's side. (For instance, she does not match Kay at all.)

Normally, I do not get involved in matches with peoples' other sides, but this was most unusual so I introduced the women and they began a lively conversation, mostly about Judy's mother's family. I think Judy is hooked. Since we knew we would be getting results from Ruth soon, I suggested we wait to see whether Ruth matched Cyndi or not. If they have a good match and passed the chromosome browser test, we could proceed assuming that Cyndi is connected to the grandfather of Judy and Ruth. If not, we would assume the connection to Cyndi goes through Judy's mother.

Cyndi and Ruth are "third cousin - fifth cousin." Not as close as Cyndi to Judy, but not bad either. There are partial answers in the chromosomes.

Judy and Cyndi match Ruth twice

Here on the left, we see that Judy and Cyndi match on chromosomes 14 and 18

Ruth and Cyndi match Judy five times!

But here on the right, there are three additional matches - on chromosomes 7, 8 and 22.

This appears to be a contradiction, but in fact it is not. Remember we have two of each chromosome, one from the father and one from the mother. FTDNA's results do not differentiate between them. What these results are telling us is that on one hand, the matches on chromosomes 14 and 18 are mutual and come therefore from Eliyahu DovBer, the grandfather of Ruth and Judy.

The matches on chromosomes 7, 8 and 22 are on Judy's two sides. The matches with Ruth (orange) are on Judy's father's side and the ones with Cyndi (blue) are probably on Judy's mother's side. In addition, Cyndi matches Judy on chromosomes 3, 6, 11, 13, 15, 16 and 17 for a total of over 50 cM. These may be on Judy's mother's side as well - or they may be from someplace else entirely. Or they may be matches that Ruth could share, but she simply didn't get those particular bits of DNA.

Oh and to complicate it further - Ruth and Cyndi have some matches that they do not share with Judy. Those are about 25 cM on chromosomes 5, 8, 10 and 16. Here too, they could be from someplace else (Ruth's father?) or they could be part of the match with Judy that Judy just didn't receive.

Unpredictability of DNA
Ruth's match with her second cousin Kay is only about 155 cM, which looks more like a third cousin than a second. That probably has to do with the fact that the adjusting algorithm that FTDNA uses does not know that Kay has no Jewish DNA from her father's side.

On the other hand, we might think that Ruth's matches with my sisters and me should be about the same. We would be wrong. Ruth and I share 496 cM, while neither of my sisters shares as much as 350 cM with Ruth. That's a difference of over forty percent. I am also significantly closer than my sisters to Judy, about 28% closer than Amy but over 50% closer than Sarajoy. I seem to be very much a Gordon!

Adam
I must touch on my obsession with finding my connection to Adam Brown.

Adam and I have a strong DNA match. We both have Kugels from Pleshchenitsy, we both have Gordons and we both have connections to Borisov where my maternal grandmother's Rosenblooms come from. When Kay's results came in a few months ago, we saw that she, Adam and I share a segment of chromosome 6 of almost 11 cM, plus two segnments on chromosome 12 of nearly 13 cM.

I was sure that this was largely on the Gordon/Kugel side and was curious to see what was on the Rosenbloom side.

To my surprise, Judy and Adam are not a match. Ruth and Adam are defined as "fourth cousin - remote cousin" and have a couple of segments in common with me. Kay matches me on segments adjacent to those, but I don't think that is significant.

So maybe we have something with Adam on the Gordon/Kugel side, but for now the Rosenbloom side looks much more promising. We'll know more about that when we see the results for our Rosenbloom cousin.

Fathers
I found it odd, to say the least, that my sisters and I have more that twice as much DNA in common with Ruth than we do with her first cousin Judy. That must come from somewhere.

Then I saw that Ruth is estimated to be a "second cousin - fourth cousin" to my father's brother and sister. And although she is a remote cousin to my father's first cousin Herb, she is not a match at all to my three second cousins on my father's side.

This almost has to come from my grandmother's side. Cyndi has no match with both Ruth and A. Betty/U.Bob, so it's not Zelinka side. I would expect my double second cousin Lee to have something matching, but no.

And even so, where is all this coming from on Ruth's end? From her father, I suppose.

Well, it also turns out that Ruth is a match with twenty-two Pikholz tests! Other than the five in my own personal family, there are only three who are not labelled "remote," two of those are from Rozdol and the third is a Pikholz by adoption, but like us, is from Skalat.

Before I start checking chromosomes for that, I want to find out a bit more about Ruth's father's family. I know his parents' names but not so much as his mother's maiden name. Ruth's parents were married in Brooklyn in 1936, so I have ordered the marriage record which should have his mother's birth name and perhaps where they came from. I have asked Ruth what she knows.

Asking is not always the way to go. Some years ago, one of the cousins sent out a genealogy questionnaire to that branch of the family. Both Ruth's older sister and her father himself reported that her parents were married in 1937 and here the database of the Italian genealogists lists the certificate in June 1936.

Oh how I love endogamy!