South African brickwall

[Biggles50]

Grandson took an Ancestry DNA test which we gave him as he is curious about his Paternal heritage.

His other Granddad and his Great Granddad both seem to have been the subject of “pass the baby” as nothing makes sense and this is especially exacerbated by inconsistent records.

Worst I find is that there is nothing of great value on a Marriage Certificate, no Father’s are shown.

When there is a record the most useful is the Death Record as that is recorded as the Birth Name and lists all their known children.

So all we have to go on is DNA matches but as so many are of Dutch, Belgian and German origin the spelling is all over the place.

His Paternal Grandma does lead to quite a few DNA matches but the Great Grandfather and beyond is zilch so far.

It makes tracing Irish Ancestors easy.

[Essnell]

Hi Biggles50,
 Cant help on the DNA side but i suggest you try one of the country threads ie Germany etc.
I have a lot of German in one side of my family and I have helped a person connected to my family with their German origins.    I got enormous amounts of help on there with language  etc. 

Hope this helps.
Essnell

[Biggles50]

Thanks E.

It is a Paternal issue, the testers Paternal Grandmother’s line is OK, 6 DNA matches in their tree.

It is the Paternal Grandfather’s line where all the 75+ cM matches all look promising and as usual we have the big BUT, none have useful trees and none have been on Ancestry in the last year.  Social Media is so far not sowing any likely candidates, well there is one but they have not posted since 2011.

10 DNA matches who share 50+cM are also not helpful so far.

It looks like successive unofficial adoptions have taken place with the Grandfather and Great Grandfather so at present determining the surname is a WIP.

Another issue is surnames, they are all over the place with Belgian, Dutch and Germanic spelling of the surnames.

South African records are pretty poor but familysearch does have a few possibles.

The tester has to tread carefully obtaining information from their paternal family so it may take time to gather the family stories.