Just got off the phone with the grandmother of a high school classmate. Her husband (J) is my grandmother's third cousin, four different ways, through Heinrich Schapansky, #946301 and Jacob Falk, #213384, both twice.
J's DNA will help us sort out the FALK DNA that my grandmother and her first cousin share from the KLASSEN DNA that Grandma and her first cousin will share with the KLASSEN matches mentioned in previous posts. However... it's still not going to give us pretty little clean cut answers, because J and Grandma's top 23andme match (K) are also third cousins through Heinrich Schapansky and Jacob Falk. What this will tell us is the places where J, K, and Grandma's family all match, we know would come from the FALK/SCHAPANSKY shared lines, and NOT the KLASSEN lines that K and Grandma share.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
First "might be a KLASSEN relative" has agreed to test!
This is BIG. I've been working on our KLASSEN brick wall for quite awhile, and kind of sort of getting a fuzzy picture of our KLASSEN ancestors.
Right now all I have as proof (well, not me, but my great-aunt) is a family picture of my great-great-grandmother, Susanna with her siblings & their spouses, and Susanna's parents. One of the women is labeled as the sister of Susanna's first husband, Peter, the man whose family we're looking for. This woman married Suanna's brother, Jakob David Falk. Her name is Katharina KLASSEN.
So, now we have strong pictorial evidence to suggest that Peter and Katharina were brother and sister.
With some help from the "Mennonite Genealogy & History" group, in addition to the GRANDMA database, I was able to track down some descendants of Katharina KLASSEN. It took a few days to exchange Facebook messages and friend requests, but I just received word this morning that Katharina's grandson has agreed to test for me! If Katharina is indeed Peter's sister, this man would be a second cousin to my grandmother, and the DNA should show that. It's not going to be a super clean-cut process to prove the relationship, but we can also use the DNA from Grandma's top 23andme match to help. Grandma's top 23andme match, and the man who has agreed to test for me are double first cousins, so they should share lots of DNA. From there, it comes down to questions of where Grandma (and her siblings and first cousin) match the two KLASSEN matches, and whether those two matches match each other on those places.
Lots of questions still to be asked and answered.
Right now all I have as proof (well, not me, but my great-aunt) is a family picture of my great-great-grandmother, Susanna with her siblings & their spouses, and Susanna's parents. One of the women is labeled as the sister of Susanna's first husband, Peter, the man whose family we're looking for. This woman married Suanna's brother, Jakob David Falk. Her name is Katharina KLASSEN.
So, now we have strong pictorial evidence to suggest that Peter and Katharina were brother and sister.
With some help from the "Mennonite Genealogy & History" group, in addition to the GRANDMA database, I was able to track down some descendants of Katharina KLASSEN. It took a few days to exchange Facebook messages and friend requests, but I just received word this morning that Katharina's grandson has agreed to test for me! If Katharina is indeed Peter's sister, this man would be a second cousin to my grandmother, and the DNA should show that. It's not going to be a super clean-cut process to prove the relationship, but we can also use the DNA from Grandma's top 23andme match to help. Grandma's top 23andme match, and the man who has agreed to test for me are double first cousins, so they should share lots of DNA. From there, it comes down to questions of where Grandma (and her siblings and first cousin) match the two KLASSEN matches, and whether those two matches match each other on those places.
Lots of questions still to be asked and answered.
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