I’ve been asked to describe the process of how I found a surname of a man that used an alias name and was of Jewish descent to boot. Number one thing to have is patience and lots of it. Number two is curiosity. Curiosity is what drives me and helps me to think outside the box. And number three thing to have is determination. Without these, this process can become daunting and frustrating.
When beginning a journey such as this, you always begin with family members and what they know. Unfortunately, both my mother and my aunt didn’t know of their biological paternal grandfather. They had always believed that their step grandfather was their grandfather and knew no different. Something that started so innocently by my cousin as to building a family tree lead to a mystery of intrigue for me. In April of 2017 I wrote a blog called “The Genealogical and Genetic Hunt for Alias ‘John Wallace’”. This blog talks about the documents that were available regarding this man “John Wallace” and the trail of clues left behind. Then on May 6, 2017 I wrote another blog called “DNA Expert & the Search for Alias John Wallace”, where Diahan Southard, a DNA expert, spoke with me regarding what to look for and how to utilize the DNA information provided by AncestryDNA, 23andme and FTDNA. This article provides detailed information that can be of great importance. During this time, I had to think about when you have an endogamous population, an endogamy or pedigree collapse can manifest. Endogamy is a tradition of marriage within the boundaries of cultural, social, religious, ethnic or tribal community in accordance with custom or law. Thus, ensuring in an endogamous community everyone will stem from the same small DNA pool. Pedigree collapse arises when two people share an ancestor that in turn causes the number of precise ancestors in the family tree of their children to be smaller than it could otherwise be. Examples of populations affected include: Ashkenazi Jews, French Canadians, Gottscheers and parts of Mexico. All of which I have within my family from both my parents. Pedigree collapse doesn’t automatically mean endogamy. As I have come to learn all endogamy populations differ from one another. However, for the Ashkenazi Jews the DNA relationship predictions compel a percentage of 2% or more for accuracy. And with at least 150 cM (centimorgans) to even be considered being looked at. As my luck would have it, I didn’t have those DNA matches yet. 2018 came in with trepidation and sadness because a sweet little boy of 15, my nephew, lost his battle to Leukemia in Nov 2017 and now my beautiful mother had been diagnosed with cancer. July came and a little sunshine shined for a few moments. Even though my mother was losing her fight to cancer maybe I could at least provide her with the knowledge of her true maiden name, that she had never known but was curious to know. On July 19th I noticed for the first time a 1st – 2nd cousin match on Ancestry with 388 cM (centimorgans) across 16 segments of DNA. Were my eyes deceiving me? This is where the blog called “Finding the Family Name” picks up the story. What I can say from this point is that when you are looking for an unknown person always get each and every document you can find out there, not just indexes. Use the indexes to find the documents. Then analyze the documents for clues to find other information. Documents if closely analyzed can provide more information than one can imagine. The article called “Analyzing A Document” will provide you with how to go about analyzing the documents. I am a fanatic about documentation and I’ll nit pick a document to death. As you are analyzing remember to think outside the box and do not limit yourself to where a document can lead to. Also trust your gut feelings. When you are looking for a DNA match that has no trees connected to their DNA then these websites can be of use. First you need to learn how to use google to benefit you the most. Digging Up Deep Roots on Facebook shared a great video on how to utilize Google. With this knowledge I went on to find everything that I could find on every website that had this person’s name. List of websites that I used:
With the help of these websites and gut feelings and one DNA match that would not talk and one DNA match that so thankfully listed their parents I was able to recreate a tree and find their connection allowing me to finally discover the true maiden name of my mother and aunt.
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Penny Alvarez-KellerGraduated from Arkansas Tech University with a degree in Management / Marketing and a degree in Economics / Finance Archives
February 2023
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