Impossibility to find right link

[Marianthompson47]

My German mother was born out of wedlock and my grandmother married three years later.

I took a DNA test three years ago and among my hundreds of matches are a myriad of German names.

It is obvious to me that one of those matches is most probably a descendant of her biological father and I have no way of finding out which one it is, other than contacting every single one to ask where their forefathers were in the 1920s.  An impossible task, even if I was Hercule Poirot!

[cockney rebel]

Hi
Does your mother have no idea of the location in Germany ?
Or perhaps where your grandmother was originally from ?
It might help to narrow it down by searching with a place name....

But yes, it's a needle in a haystack job!
Rebel

[Marianthompson47]

My mother was born in 1928 in Halle an Der Saale, Germany.

And my grandmother was born in Bedzin, Poland which was then under Prussian hands.

As you say, it is like looking for a needle in a haystack!!

Thanks for your input!

[4b2]

What site did you take the test with? In my experience, very-very few people from Germany have tested with Ancestry, and not many more with MyHeritage.

What are your largest cM matches? And are you able to sort out between your mother's paternal and maternal matches?

You'd generally need matches through the actual unknown father to determine who he is. If there are cousin and/or 2nd cousin matches, you might be able to work out his grandparents, but probably not him. If there are no useful matches within that range then it gets a bit tricky, especially if there happens to be more non-paternal events.

The basic process is to go through all your matches from the largest down; go through the shared matches (in a tab), noting groups of matches that tend to group in a cluster. Generally I require a match to cluster with at least 3 other tests, but there can be overlaps that we can't really flesh out with Ancestry's limited tools. Add those to a group. Look at their trees, open the dead-end ancestors and press the [Search] button to see if you can continue the line in public trees (obvious accuracy warning). When you find common ancestors among the matches, note them down. If the match is a dead-end, note that so you don't keep going over it. Note it if it's possibly useful. Note if it you've added it to a file with MRCAs.

Once you've done that, if you have close matches, you will now have your mother's documentable maternal line, and unknown groups that will probably relate to the unknown father. You can then look through those groups, looking for a possible marriage between descendants of common ancestors in the matches.

That's the basics, but there are plenty of caveats, things to understand, and a few pitfalls.

Generally speaking, DNA tests are just an extra coordinate and require a lot of leg work.

[Biggles50]

Anything on the Continent is very much hit and miss on the availability of records.

It is not an impossible task, more a difficult one but it is solvable.

The big IF is that a DNA test needs to be taken.

If a Half Cousin (Grandson of the unknown Father) of your generation takes a DNA test then you would share c449cM, with their child c224cM and Grandchild 125cM.  This is highly unlikely so we look back another generation, then another, so a mammoth task.

I suggest you start Grouping your DNA matches and your shared DNA matches related to known ancestral lines and then those without a Group marker are the ones of interest.  You have the Paternal, Maternal and Unknown so you have a start there.

Taking a test with My Heritage may open up other matches, as will uploading your DNA to Gedmatch, ftDNA etc.

Giving an example I manage the DNA for someone whose GG GF is unknown, and following the Grouping I was left with over 100 possible relations of the unknown GG GF who were then placed in their own Group.  Working through each I discounted those and changed them to a different Group.


Eventually one lead me to a line where their ancestors lived in the next village two miles away, the DNA match is not a direct descendent of the potential Father but so far that is as good as it gets.

Good luck

[Marianthompson47]

Thank you for your responses everybody.

The closest match with a German name has a 54 cM. I do not believe this person to be related to my mother as it is so very low.  All others are lower.

My thought Is that quite possibly, my mother's biological father didn't have any other children or if so, have not joined a DNA test site.

But the question I am asking myself is why so many German Named individuals share My DNA...


My tree and DNA results are on Ancestry.

Thanks once again! ☺️