Classic writer’s block. I’ve been struggling with what to write about lately.
Then I realized DNA testing is a good topic to touch on. It’s where I’ve spent a lot of my research time and energy in recent years.
In case my relatives (both immediate & more distant) are wondering, “Why did he need me to do that DNA test, anyway?” Well, first, I can’t thank you enough for testing; it really is helpful. And second, here’s why…
With the help of DNA testing many relatives in the past 6 years, let me summarize a few major discoveries that have been made that would not have been possible otherwise, one for each of my grandparents:
GRANDPARENT #1: Learned of a living 1st cousin of my great-grandfatherWallace KANALLEY, in her 90s, whose biological father was not what it says on her birth certificate. Her father was actually an uncle of my great-grandpa – he never married, and didn’t have kids, that I knew of – and we figured it out together. We swapped old family photos & stories, and it’s been wonderful connecting. Older generation relatives who tested obviously shared more DNA with her, and Shared Matches narrowed down branch of family pretty quickly. More digging confirmed it. She was born in the town Wallace’s uncle lived in, and her family knew him – she had even met him.
GRANDPARENT #2: Knocked down one of my all-time greatest brick walls, my 2nd great-grandfather Franz ROMANN, who I only knew was (1) “the son of Martin & Anna” from U.S. records and (2) from West Prussia. Depending on the record, his birth year was sometimes 15-20 years different; his immigration year was 10-15 years different; nothing was really consistent. West Prussia no longer exists, there are several Kreis (counties, essentially) he could have been from, and on top of it all, I suspected a spelling change, per my Grandma. Sure enough, the DNA matches led me to a few specific Kreis, I found a marriage record for him to his 1st wife Maria Thom (who appears with him in U.S. records) in the Poznan Project of all places, a Polish marriage indexing project, and a further examination of European records led me to his birth in Wysoka, Byslaw, Kreis Tuchel, West Prussia, today Poland. His parents: Martin ROMANOWSKI & Anna BONA. Romanowski! The Sept. 13th birthdate was one of the clinchers, matching his death certificate in the U.S., and Bona DNA links made it a slam dunk.
GRANDPARENT #3: Determined that my IGLINSKI family was actually the ZAMIARA family in the 1700s. This was a wild journey, and I plan to give it its own blog post at some point. Traditional records gave me a tip, and DNA analysis backed it up – then further DNA analysis confirmed it overwhelmingly. It wasn’t just one person who changed the name, it was a group of Zamiara family members who suddenly became Iglinski around the early 1800s in Szemborowo. Why? I don’t know for sure. I have theories, and I’ll get to that. But a flat-out change in surname, in the old country (usually a surname change happens with immigration, but that’s not the case here).
My 2nd great-grandfather Stanislaw IGLINSKI, born 1885 in Niewolno, Poland. His paternal grandfather was born Maciej ZAMIARA, but died Maciej IGLINSKI, along with many other ZAMIARAs who turned to IGLINSKIs.
GRANDPARENT #4: Confirmed the birthplace of my 3rd great-grandmother Margaretha (MANDL) BAKER as Breitenbrunn, Amberg-Sulzbach, Bavaria, Germany, not far from the Czechia & Austria borders, after years of uncertainty on her origin. She came over to the USA by herself, age 18, and for years I couldn’t find clues as to her birthplace or parents. How did the DNA solve this? We (especially older relatives on the GRUNDTISCH side of my tree) had many DNA matches from that little area of Germany, I learned the surname was spelled MANDL there (typically MANDEL in U.S. records), and I wrote to the Archives of Regensburg; they confirmed it, sending me her baptism record (it matched the birth date I had for her), plus additional records taking the family back multiple generations.
Discovered entire new branches of the family tree living today in Western New York, where I grew up, that I had no idea were relatives of mine. In most cases, it didn’t take much digging before the connections were obvious. But there was a reason they hadn’t been determined previously: A mother’s maiden name spelled incorrectly in traditional records; children separating at young ages from their parents; orphans or adoptions in some cases; a series of young daughters in the “old country” who emigrated with their parents and changed their names through marriage shortly after arriving in the USA, otherwise not showing in census records. Connecting with many of these living DNA relatives has led to never-seen-before family photos, stories & anecdotes.
So I was able to tear down brick walls, and find some new interesting twists in the family tree.
How was I so confident about each of these discoveries as they came along?
Every one of us is unique, and we all inherit different pieces of DNA from our ancestors. That part is obvious, and makes sense, right?
Through DNA analysis, I can determine which segments were handed down from which ancestors. Yes, I can get as granular as, ‘this particular segment must have been passed down from great-great-grandpa John because descendants of John all inherited it, as did descendants of John’s siblings.’ So I basically do DNA mapping – assigning specific segments to ancestors.
The more relatives who test, the easier this gets, and the more “coverage” I have pertaining to specific ancestors. While I may not have inherited a certain segment from an ancestor of interest, and maybe my sister didn’t get it either, my great-aunt may have. And so on. The more puzzle pieces I have to work with, the better.
In some cases, I only know a segment is “paternal” or “maternal,” or I can only determine the grandparent it was inherited from. But often that is enough to make substantial discoveries about ethnicity, origin, genetic population and assigning relatives to the larger tree.
Along the way, there are Shared Matches. So once I figure out segments, I see people who inherited these same pieces of DNA (3 or more = triangulation, greatly increasing the odds it came from a common ancestor as opposed to ‘by chance’). I can look at their family trees for clues – similar geography, similar ethnicity, familiar names. The science doesn’t lie, there’s a relation of some kind. And eventually, in many cases, I do indeed see where the link must be, whether it be the actual common ancestors or at least which branch of the tree.
Before DNA came along, we could only rely on traditional records. But now we have science. It tells us Person A and Person B are definitely related, somehow. And sometimes Person C is connected too. With careful examination and analysis, we can often figure out how.
Above: My Genetic Family Tree, via DNA Painter. I color-code ancestors/families while doing DNA research. Solid colors indicate I have confirmed/verified that I inherited DNA from these ancestors.
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A digital media marketer who is also a passionate genealogy research enthusiast with 25+ years of experience in traditional genealogy and 10+ years in DNA & genetic genealogy.
Craig Kanalley 
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