I have been having fun using the shared matches pro at Ancestry. I wrote three Blogs on my mother’s maternal shared matches and was able to place many more people on her (mostly) Nicholson DNA/Genealogy Tree. That is, I have a chart where I place people that are both DNA matches and genealogical matches.
My mother has more maternal matches than paternal, but still quite a few on the paternal side:
That is interesting, considering that her father was a German with roots in Latvia. As I go through my mother’s paternal matches, there are two fairly close matches and I know how they fit in. Here are some names starting in the Extended Family portion of her match list:
It seems like a logical method to go down this list. There is one person on the list with a common ancestor.
Holger
Holger has no family tree. Holger’s closest match is to my mother. So that doesn’t help me figure out how he fits in.
Susanne
A.E. has a common ancestor with my mom. She shows up as a fourth cousin to my mom on my Rathfelder Chart. I don’t know if she would be related on other lines:
Susanne’s parents are from Germany:
Susanne has few shared matches with my mother. The better way would be to trace her line back, but that would take a while.
Alex
So far, I have not done too well. Alex does not have a helpful tree. I see Alex’s father Ralf as a shared match:
However, Ralf also does not have a tree.
Amy and Thomas
Amy has few shared matches and no tree. Thomas has a tree:
However, I now see that Anna Marie Daal was from Latvia also. It may be good to try to figure out the genealogy at some time. I’ll start now:
This is my version of Thomas’ tree with just the people I am interested in.
Here are some Anne Burkowitzs from Latvia:
The one closest to 1874 was born in 1876 in the Ozolnieku Parish and had a father named Peter. This is a list of passports.
This is apparently Anna Marie Daal:
Anna Maria was confirmed near a Gangnus and born in Riga:
This begs the question why the father’s name was not listed. Was Barbara a single mother? I guess I’ll stop for now. It was interesting to find the Gangnus name near Daal.
Next Group of My Mother’s Matches
I hope that I have more luck with this group:
Two of these six matches have common ancestors, so are already placed.
J.S.
Here are some good shared matches:
There is another uncle of J.S. that I did not add. Let’s look at my Schwechheimer DNA/Genealogy Chart:
I don’t see Karin or Stephanie on this chart. Before I can figure out where J.S. fits in, I need to find out how Karin and Stephanie fit in. There is also Valdis who is Karin’s brother. I started to build a tree for him, but I’m not sure why I stopped:
Valdis’ mother was a Schwechheimer. Here is what Ancestry proposes:
Let’s start at the top. One problem is that I have that Rosine was one of 16 children. That is a lot. Rosine had 6 brothers named Johann, so Ancestry picked an unfortunate name to identify him. Johan is likely:
Johann Georg Michael Schwechheimer. He is in the 1834 Revision Books as George Michael (makes sense as there was already a Johann Georg Philipp.
My ancestor Rosine shows on the right side of the List.
Vialdis’ sister has a much larger tree:
However, this tree has many Gangnus lines also:
Assuming Karin’s tree is right, we share at least four common ancestors. That must mean that there were two Schwechheimer siblings that married two Gangnus siblings. I am inclined to add this line to my Schwechheimer DNA/Genealogy Chart. This part appears to be right:
The resident list of Hirschenhof from 1858 shows Friedrich Schwechheimer married to Maria Hausel and with a son Georg Adam born in 1852. I don’t often do genealogy from the top down (meaning older to younger), but I will in this situation.
Then I have this issue:
My tree shows that Johann Georg Michael born in 1802 had two wives. I assume that Anna Marie Neumeister is the widow mentioned in Karin’s tree. However, the Resident Record has Marie as geb Hausel which I assume means born. Perhaps Neumeister was a married name. Here is my tree view:
This can only show so much. My ancestor Rosine is off the chart to the right. This correctly shows Georg A descending from Johann G M and not Anna C Gangnus.
Adding Kristin and Family to My DNA/Genealogy Charts
However, if I add these four to the Schwechheimer Chart, I also need to add them to the Gangnus Chart.
Gangnus DNA/Genealogy Chart
Here is my chart as is:
Here it is with Valdis and family added:
Hopefully, I got it right.
Karil
Here is Karil’s maternal grandmother where the Latvia connection is.
I don’t see any large shared matches for Karil, so my option is to skp her or look at her genealogy. I’ll try the genealogy route. Here is an interesting record from 1950:
Here is a record that gives Zenta’s maiden name:
It is Kröger. I did not find who our common ancestors are, but it seems clear that we have one. I am a bit overwhelmed that the family is on Lists of Persecutees. There must be some interesting stories there.
Pwa, Valdis, and Gunars
I did not find an easy connection with Pwa. Valdis shows common ancestors at Ancestry. Let’s look at Gunars:
Peteris is Gunars son, which does not help in itself.
K.B. is Gunar’s grandniece. So I suppose she must be the granddaughter of a sibling of Gunars? From S.B.’s tree, I think my mother’s connection with her is here:
These names appear to be Latvian. Ozolnieks is Latvian but the birth is said to be Germany. Grizis is said to be from Latvia according to the tree. There is no birth place for the other two names in the red box.
Karin shows at Ancestry as a second cousin to Gunars, so if that is right their common ancestor could be here:
Summary and Conclusions
- I started looking at my mother’s paternal shared matches
- The genealogy is more difficult on this line as it goes back to Latvia
- Due to upheavals in Latvia including communism and World Wars, many people have not traced their Latvian genealogy back that far.
- Rather than going down my mom’s match list, it may make more sense to look at the people I have already placed in a tree and look at their matches to see if there are any close relatives.