I recently saw an interesting DNA match on my mother’s side. This was on her paternal Rathfelder side. What was interesting was that the DNA match was quite high and the Rathfelder matches are quite rare.
My Mom’s Match With Donna At AncestryDNA
My mom’s match with Donna is here:
Ancestry predicts that Donna and my mom are 2nd cousins. However, they give a range between 1st and 2nd cousins. Here are some possibilities by DNA:
My guess is that my mom Gladys and Donna are 1st cousins twice removed.
Donna’s Genealogy
I wrote to Donna saying that I thought that the match with my family was on our Rathfelder side. Donna wrote back saying that she didn’t know who the father of her grandfather but her grandfather was born in 1919 to a Miss Barlow and his name was was Leonard Rathfulder Barlow. My mother’s father’s brother’s name was Leonhard Rathfelder. He was born in 1896 and could be the right age to be the father of Leonard Rathfulder Barlow.
Here is how Donna may fit in:
My mom is on the left. Donna is in the next to the last row. If my guess is right, then Donna would be my mother’s 1st cousin twice removed and my 2nd cousin once removed. The fact that Donna’s grandfather’s name is so close to my great Uncle’s name seems to be a major clue.
Here is a photo of my grandfather Alexander and his brother Leo:
Here is a photo from Anita of Leo’s three children in Latvia – Hermanis, Nina and Vera. Hermanis is Catherine’s father and Vera is Anita and Inese’s grandmother.
More DNA Comparisons
If my guess is right, then Donna should match my mother, and my family in a similar way that Anita and Inese match my family. All I have to do is fill in the blanks:
Jim and Rusty tested at FTDNA. Anita and Inese tested at MyHeritage. All have uploaded their results to Gedmatch Genesis for comparison except for Donna.
Here are the known matches with Anita and Inese:
The DNA matches range from a low of 80.7cM between Rusty and Inese to a high of 213.5 with Heidi and Anita. This turns out to an overall average of 127 which is close to the reported average of 123 cM for 2nd cousin, once removed.
When I add in Donna’s matches with my family, they are higher than between Anita and Inese and my family:
Jim and Rusty’s comparisons with Donna are blank because they didn’t test at Ancestry. The biggest different is with my first cousin Cindy. She has about twice as much matching DNA with Donna compared to her matches with Anita and Inese. However, it appears that these are all 2nd cousin, once removed relationships. Donna just got more Rathfelder DNA than average.
The Logistics
At first glance, it would appear unlikely that a child born in South Shields on Tyneside would have a father who was from Latvia:
However, Leo worked on a ship and traveled extensively:
Leo is on the right in the first photo and on the left in the second one. That means that I cannot provide the exact circumstance of how Leo and Miss Barlow met. Perhaps she also worked on a ship or perhaps Leo had regular visits to where Miss Barlow lived.
Summary and Conclusions
- Putting together the DNA match and other evidence, It appears that Leonhard Rathfelder is the father of Leonard Rathfulder Barlow who was born in 1919 in England.
- This could be further verified if Donna uploads her DNA to Gedmatch Genesis for comparisons.
- I don’t have specific evidence of where Miss Barlow and Leo were in 1918, but it appears that it is quite likely that they were the parents of Leonard Rathfulder Barlow.