The Mitochondrial DNA of Esther Pickholtz Stern

It was just a few weeks ago that I reported in this space about Marcus/Max Stern and Esther Pickholtz and their eight children. They came from Siemakowce to New York in 1907 and a number of descendants have online trees on Ancestry. I know that Esther belongs to the Skalat section of the Pikholz family, but I haven't a clue who her parents are. We do not know when either Max or Esther died so I cannot see her father's name on her tombstone. Or her death certificate.

There were Pikholz families not far from Siemakowce - in Buczacz, Kopycienice and Husiatyn - but nothing in the first two seemed to fit and Husiatyn just didn't seem right.

In the meantime, Lois, a great-granddaughter of Esther and Max, did a Mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA) test at my request. MtDNA is passed from women to all their children, so can be useful in examining a maternal line such as Lois, her mother, her grandmother, up to Esther and her unknown mother. But MtDNA mutates very slowly and female surnames tend to change every generation, so successes here are infrequent.

Lois' MtDNA results showed her haplogroup to be K1a1b1a, and she has 1864 matches at last count. There are three other Pikholz descendants who are K1a1b1a - Linda, Amos and Erika. Linda is my first cousin and her mother's side is not relevant to Pikholz research. Amos' MtDNA goes back to his great-grandmother Gitel Pikholz, but that is on our Rozdol side, so also not relevant here.

Erika's MtDNA path in yellow

But my half-third cousin Erika is quite another matter. Her mother's maternal grandmother is Roza Zellermayer. We have multiple Zellermayer-Pikholz marriages as I discussed here and most recently here.

Now obviously this does not prove anything. Erika's MtDNA comes from Josef Zellermayer's wife who is presumably not a Zellermayer herself. And there is nothing that connects Esther Stern to the Zellermayers, aside from the MtDNA. But I am intrigued by the possibilities. There were multiple marriages in the 1800s between the Pikholz and Zellermayer families, why not one more?

Some of the Zellermayers were from Husiatyn, a possibility I dismissed just a month ago.

The Zellermeyers are shown here in yellow shading, the Pikholz in blue.

In the meantime, Lois' autosomal DNA is now on GEDmatch and she has four segments in common with Erika, two of which are on the X-chromosome. The two on the X may support the Zellermayer connection. The other two are small and are not supported by matches with other family members.

I showed my post from six weeks go to the Stern descendants but have not gotten much of a response, so I am not optimistic. The MtDNA results throw a new light so I'll give it another try,