I was interested in a match that I saw recently at MyHeritage. I match Matthew who shows this ancestry:
I actually purchased a book in German by Gustav Gangnus on the Gangnus family. So it is possible that Friedrich S. Gangnus is in the book. I do see the name. He married a Hassenfuss. I am so sure this will link up with my tree that I will create a floating tree in Ancestry and then try to attach it at the right place.
According to the 2003 book I have, Friedrich’s father was Georg Michael Gangnus. It turns out that he is already in my tree:
Here is part of my Gangnus DNA/Genealogy Tree:
This discrepancy is that I descend from Johann Jacob born 1777 and Biedermann. Matthew appears to descend from Johann Jacob and Boehler. This could be due to a second marriage. As I look up my Gangnus book, I see that is the case.
Herre is Matthew:
Matthew shows as my half fourth cousin once removed. That is pretty obscure. Chances are that some other DNA snuck in ther on the Hassenfuss or Schmidt side.
Gangnus? DNA
Here is how Matthew and I match:
This would be on my paternal side. Here is the information in tabular form:
I will put this information into DNA Painter. However, by default, anything under 7 cM is not entered.
One interesting thing, is that it is likely that this DNA could have come from Johann Jacob Gangnus born 1777. Here is Maternal Chromosome 4 mapped:
I have this mapped to Johann Jacob Gangnus 1777, but there could be other ancestors lurking around. The right side of my match with Matthew defines the crossover from my Rathfelder side to my Lentz side. My match with Jereme starts my Lentz side matches. Chromosome 5 was under the pre-set limit.
Here is Chromosome 15:
Here my match with Matthew does not fill in blank area. However, as he is beneath the orange matches, it shows that those matches are actually carrying down Gangnus rather than Rathfelder DNA. The match with Carolyn is on the Lentz side and is probably an incorrect match as it is in an area that is supposed to be the Rathfelder side.
Matthew and Gladys Painted
Gladys is my (late) mother.
See the small match I had on Chromosome 5 does not show on my mother’s match. My mom’s match on Chromosome 1 is below the limit.
Here I am showing my mother’s paternal and maternal side to make it look more like my maternal side. Angelina was someone with a fairly large match but I couldn’t figure out the genealogy of the match. Interestingly, Chromosome 15 did not get painted as it was slightly below the threshold. It’s probably a valid match as both my mother and I had it.
Summary and Conclusions
- Matthew or one of his relatives did a good job getting his Latvian genealogy back to the 1800’s
- It was clear to me that Gangnus plus Latvia plus a good DNA match was important
- The book by Gustav Gangnus on the Gangnus family made it easy to connect my Gangnus family to Matthew’s
- Painting the matches helps to visualize where the DNA matches are.