Who is my mother's real father

[Marianthompson47]

A while back I joined Ancestry and built a tree.

Then I took a DNA Test.

Among my matches are people with German names.

Now I know my German mother's birth father was not who I thought to be my real grandfather.

Is there anyway to pinpoint who in that list, would be a descendant of my real grandfather?

Thank you!

[Biggles50]

Yes, but……

It will be a longshot!

A Grandchild of your Grandfather will be a Half Cousin and they would share a mean of 449cM in the range 156-979cM.

A child of the Half Cousin would share a mean of 224cM in the range 62-469cM.

The chances of them taking a DNA test is slim, even slimmer if they are German by birth.

In cases like yours we can and do look further back generationally, that is looking at potential Half Second Cousins and their children, build a family tree around the potential DNA match and see where it leads.

It may also lead to results if you upload the DNA data to Gedmatch and also to take a DNA test with My Heritage.

To give you an example my Half Sister’s Mother was Belgian but appears to be of Germanic ancestry and she has only 700 DNA matches via her Mother of which the highest shares only 31cM with her and the remainder all share less than 20cM.  Hence it is a needle in a haystack trying to find anything at all as DNA tests are not popular in the EU.

Sorry if this does not give the answers that you hoped for.

I keep writing in threads that DNA can be a waiting game.

For one DNA test that I manage the person’s Great Grandmother has an unknown Father, and despite building 120 Family Trees I am no nearer finding who he was after two years of DNA lead research.

Good luck.

[Marianthompson47]

Thank you very much Biggles!
It is indeed a minefield when navigating our DNA results.

I so hope for a more positive answer but realise my minefield is extremely large.

My maternal mother was born in Bedzin, Poland in 1915.
She and her mother plus sister were chased by the Prussians and had to leave Bedzin. They were also Jewish.

They eventually settled in Brussels Belgium.
My grand mother returning to Dusseldorf where she had established herself..

I am stuck as to exactly how they travelled from Bedzin and when.

But ultimately, I was desperate to find the elusive grandfather.
I will try and follow your advice for further DNA tests.
Thanks again .

[Aguella]

Hi Marian

1. You are definitely not alone - I think most people that seriously look into genetic genealogy discover an NPE or 3!

2. Biggles50's suggestion of uploading to GEDMatch and MyHeritage is excellent - MyHeritage is infinitely better than Ancestry for European matches (simply because more Europeans use MyHeritage than Ancestry). My mother is Dutch, and her Ancestry matches are pretty paltry, but her MyHeritage matches are particularly rich and far surpass any of my British relatives.

3. I'd like to give a bit more of an optimistic response than Biggles50, to balance things out. Two of my grandparents were the results of NPEs, i.e. the same situation as your mother. For one it took a few weeks, for the other it took a few months, of research to identify who I thought the father was likely to be. Both were then confirmed by closer relatives identified on those branches (e.g. first cousins) taking a test, which confirmed the relationship. I was lucky in that one of those fathers was the only son in his family of 12 sisters, so he was the only potential 'culprit'!

I have even identified (with as strong confidence as possible this far back) the biological father of my illegitimate great-great-grandmother. This took a great deal more work, and although I knew the broader family he came from, it took several years before I had identified the specific member of that family who was the father. I knew he was likely to be the grandson of Michael & Jane, born in the late 18th century. They had a dozen or so grandsons. But then finally I linked my DNA to one of Michael & Jane's daughters-in-law: so the mystery father had to be one of their sons - and they only had one who was still alive at the relevant time. Huzzah!

Take things one step at a time - upload your Ancestry results onto MyHeritage, and see what happens. Please remember you don't need to buy a new DNA test, you just have to download the raw results from Ancestry and upload them to MyHeritage. It's free. Let me know if you need any pointers on how to do that. 

[Biggles50]

In thread

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=863488.27

Post #28 there is an explanation of using Groups within the DNA section of Ancestry.

It can take a while to undertake the action but once one gets are far as one can it is those who have not been placed into a Group(s) that are worthy of further investigation.

P.s. do read the whole thread as there may be some helpful information for you in there.

[Marianthompson47]

Thank you all! I will try and get somewhere with your useful answers. 🤗☺️

[Josephine]

I'm confused: why would they be half-cousins?

The grandchildren of my grandfather are all my first cousins.

(Apologies if this is a stupid question.)

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I'm confused: why would they be half-cousins?

The grandchildren of my grandfather are all my first cousins.

(Apologies if this is a stupid question.)

Full cousins share a set of grandparents, half cousins share one grandparent.

[Josephine]

Thank you. I'm currently on pain medication that muddles my thinking, and I knew I had to be missing something, so I appreciate your response.