How Many Ancestors: 2018 Edition

Finally!

Here is my update to the ongoing "how many ancestors have you identified" quest.

The idea is to list the "known by name" ancestors at each genealogical level: parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. As the potential ancestors double and the available records decrease over time, the challenge increases. Let's check mine and see what I've found.

Here's my chart from 2017:

And here is 2018's:

Some improvement...

In blue above are the generations where I found new ancestors over the last year.

In Level 7, the 4x great-grandparents, I made zero progress. The missing ancestors are my Irish lines. I may be forever stuck here. I have some new leads, but they are still speculative.

In Levels 8, 9 and 10, I located new records for my maternal grandmother's West Prussian family. I had great success with her Wuerttemburg lines in 2017, and now Ancestry added West Prussian microfilms that I had rented years ago, but were now much more complete and had some search capabilities. Many of these records are from what is now Poland.

Numberswise, I added 2 percentage points to my total, and now know fully a third of ten generations of ancestors (including me!) by name. Not bad!

I know were aren't supposed to be name collectors, but I enjoy this post every year ;)

One great record I found was the marriage of a pair of 7th great-grandparents, Marcin Mazciewski to Maria Nyckzynski, in Sommerau, Kries Rosenberg, West Prussia in 1744. I love how the marriages are just squeaked in on the page:

Happy Belated New Year and Happy Searching!

© 2018 Sally Knudsen

Snips: Ancestry.com. Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1518-1921 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2017.

Birthplace Pedigree, or WOW, Did My Ancestors Travel!

Of course, I had to jump on the bandwagon in creating a birthplace pedigree chart! For "extra credit," I went to six generations, only because all of my lines migrated so much!

Here's the picture:

Thanks to Cheri at Carolina Girl Genealogy for posting this on Facebook and to those who made the template!

© 2016 Sally Knudsen

#52Ancestors (50) Wilhelmina Stachel of Kreis Rosenberg

This week's ancestor is a maternal great-great-great-grandmother, Wilhelmina STACHEL.

You might tell by her name that she is part of my German ancestry. More precisely, she was born on the far eastern edge of West Prussia, near Gdansk in present-day Poland. I was fortunate enough (after a couple of false starts) to locate records of her parish on microfilm and gather numerous family records.

Wilhelmina was born on 29 January 1842 in the village of Peterkau (now Piotrkowo, Poland) in Kreis Rosenberg, West Prussia. Her parents were Christoph STACHEL and Gottliebe SCHMIDTKE. Christoph and Gottliebe married in Sommerau, a nearby village, and had at least eight children. Christoph died in 1872 and then most of the family immigrated to the United States.

Wilhelmina married Friedrich KOPKAU of Peterkau in 1864. They had four children in West Prussia and five more in northern Michigan where they first settled.

Wilhelmina STACHEL and Friedrich KOPKAU, c 1895

The STACHEL's and KOPKAU's were part of a group of West Prussians who settled in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan. They practiced the Evangelical Lutheran faith and began their own church - Trinity Evangelical Lutheran - in Lansing. This was the same church my family worshipped in until they left Michigan in the 1950's.

While these Prussians may not have been a true endogamous population (endogamy: the custom of marrying within a particular social or cultural group in accordance with custom or law), they certainly married among their own, first in West Prussia then in Lansing for the first few decades after arriving in Michigan. There were several small villages they came from originally, and then they lived within walking distance of one another in southeast Lansing. The census pages prove it!

My family ancestry is filled with the STACHEL and KOPKAU names from many different branches of the old Prussian trees. Some of the other contemporary names are:

• Laskofski
• Rominski
• Fetzke
• Papke
• Erbe
• Massuch
• Murawski/Morofsky

There are many instances of sibling pairs marrying sibling pairs and neighbors marrying next-door neighbors. There were also relatively few given names used. I have so many couples with the names Friedrich, Wilhelm, Christoph, Carl and August and wives Wilhelmina, Augusta, Carolina, Louisa, and Gottliebe. They are, I'm certain, the reason family tree software was invented!

As I dig deeper into my DNA, I have made a couple of connections where we cannot determine a matching surname, but we all descend from families of Kreis Rosenberg. Untangling THAT web may prove a real challenge! 

Wilhelmina lived the rest of her life in Lansing. She died on 12 Feb 1914 and is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery with Friedrich and most of her family.

Wilhelmina's page in my database

© 2014 Sally Knudsen

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Thank you FreeDictionary

#52Ancestors (39) Caroline Papke Doerk: Travel Together, Settle Together

This #52Ancestors post now switches back to my old Prussian roots on my maternal side of the family. I'll share some information gathered about my great-great-great-grandmother Caroline 'Carrie' PAPKE DORK (or DOERK).

Carrie was born 2 June 1840 in (then) Charlottenwerder, Kreis Rosenberg, West Prussia, which is now Redaki, Poland. Redaki is a very small village about 90 miles / 140km south of Gdansk.

I wrote several posts of my search through maps and microfilms for my Prussian ancestry. Here are a few if you wish to read my process. Otherwise, I am skipping right along to the DORK's.

Seriously, genealogy is fun for me, but when I work on the DORK family, I cannot help but smile!

Carrie's parents were Gottfried PAPKE and Augustine or Augusta FETZKE. I have yet to get back farther on her parent's lines, nor do I know their marriage date. They did have at least three other children: Augustine, who married Carl WALDOWSKI in Charlottenwerder, and Gottfried and Wilhelm, who both died as young children.

Carrie married Carl DORK on 14 August 1859 in Charlottenwerder. Carl's parents were Gottfried DORK and Anna Maria PODANN. Carrie and Carl had all of their known children in Charlottenwerder:

1. Carl Herman
2. Augusta
3. Wilhelmina
4. Johanna
5. Maria
6. Otto Carl  *my line
7. Rudolph

What became of husband Carl is a mystery I have not yet solved. I did not find his death record in any of the microfilms I have reviewed so far. I do know that in 1882 on the ship Braunschweig, Carrie and all of her younger children left West Prussia and landed in America.

I learned a lot and have more to learn:

• Caroline is listed as the traditional head of this group, but no Carl is found
• On the second page, there was a surprise: Auguste PAPKE, Carrie's mother!
• I do not know who the 5-month-old Otto is
• Carl her husband and Carl her son are not on this ship, but son Carl does end up with the family in America

Carl the younger would have been about 22 years old at the time of this emigration, plenty old enough to go on his own ahead of the family. I know that Auguste was obviously on the voyage but have no other records of her in America...yet. My supposition is that both Carrie's husband Carl and her father Carl died, so the rest of the family left for America.

On this ship list, I found three other family names that all settled in the same area of Lansing, Ingham, Michigan with the DORK's: RIEMANN, SCHIFRANSKI, and SZCZPANEK. This 'group migration' is a very interesting topic, one I hope to explore in later blog posts.

Carrie lived to see six of her seven adult children marry and have grandchildren. Carrie died on 15 March 1900 and is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Lansing.

Carrie's page in my database

© 2014 Sally Knudsen

Confessions of a Haplogroupie™

I have a confession to make: I am addicted to DNA testing.

The whole idea of it completely fascinates me. I now consider myself a haplogroupie (™ me!). I've participated long enough that I have a basic understanding of what a centiMorgan is, or where my haplogroups originated, and who might be my MRCAs.

Don't get me wrong - I am anything but an expert. Perhaps to family or non-genealogy friends, I sound downright scientifically educated. But as genetic genealogy goes, I am in kindergarten.  I remember being in high school biology class and just getting the most basic introduction of what DNA and helixes and chromosomes were. Just a few years ago, we all heard when the human genome was first mapped. Now? I have a copy of my own genome on my computer!  I love to learn and absorb new information. And really, that's a big part of why I work on my family history. This is genealogy for us nerds!

My DNA story began about a year and a half ago, as I read more and more about the popularity of DNA testing for genealogy. My paper records go a pretty substantial way and I figured this is a great opportunity to see what new data I could inject into those old facts. The company 23andMe advertised a $99 holiday special in December 2012, so I ordered a kit and dipped my first toe in the DNA testing waters. About a month later, I received my results and was hooked. I didn't learn anything really new, but the haplogroup (simply put, your geographic + genetic place in the world) results confirmed what the paper records told me. 23andMe offered the autosomal testing kit, which essentially tests a broad spectrum of your distant family. As a woman, I was unable to specifically learn information from my paternal side. 

By the end of 2013, two very close relations showed up in my list of DNA matches: they turned out to be two sisters, who were first cousins once removed on my dad's side of the tree. Now we had something to work with! I requested contact and sharing with them and with all reasonably close matches in my list. I also asked my dad to get tested...and he did. (Thanks Dad!) Receiving his results really showed the power of 23andMe's connections. We could link our profiles together and suddenly a list of 'P' names showed up for me - those who matched on my paternal side. Then, by default, the others were maternal matches.

I have since tested with AncestryDNA, and transferred my 23andMe results to FamilyTreeDNA. I guess that's the trifecta of testing - getting into all three major databases. Both sets of new results came back just this week, so I'm now neck-deep into my data.

So Sally, what can you share with us?

1. My haplogroups matched exactly with my paper records.

My maternal haplogroup is U5a2b which originated in northern Europe. I received this through my mother's mother's, etc side. Sure enough, my grandmother's family can be traced back to small villages in eastern Poland, which was previously the edge of West Prussia.

My paternal haplogroup, derived from my dad's test, is R1b1b2a1a2f2, which even to a novice seems mighty specific. A little research determined this group shows a very high likelihood of being from northern Ireland. Two for two - that is exactly my father's ancestry. There is speculation this line is from an ancient Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages. Maybe we'll never know, but it makes a great story!

My dad's maternal haplogroup is X2c1. This is a fairly rare group which originated in central Europe but has the highest current concentration in Quebec. Ding, ding, ding! My paternal grandmother's family is indeed French-Canadian with some Belgian influence.

2. How do you keep your matches straight?

23andMe has tools to analyze your chromosomal similarities with your matches. I found a wonderful free spreadsheet download [1] that allows you to 'paint' your matches. Yes, it was a little tedious, but of course I did it! I simplified the spreadsheet to one page and assigned a color to each match. Then using the matching strands from each of the 23 chromosomes in 23andMe's comparison table, I color blocked the pieces. I am finding it very easy to use and visually see my matches.

Here is my dad's sheet, showing chromosomes 1-10:

Note some of the very long strands in purple and orange. Those are the cousins. You can graphically see how much they have in common with my father. At least know we can determine which part of the tree future matches might be from.

I'll blog again about how things are going with my matches from each of the three websites. It's too early at this point and I'd like to be able to give a fair comparison of the three companies.

It's a new world out there. Go get tested!

*****

[Disclosure: I paid for my own tests and have no commercial relationship with any of the DNA testing companies]

Helix graphic with free user license

[1] Spreadsheet download from Andrea's Ancestors blog

© 2014 Sally Knudsen

My American Pie

Fourth of July has rolled around again with all the celebrations that entails. My family will celebrate Independence Day by cooking out, eating, eating some more, and watching fireworks, perhaps legal and perhaps courtesy of some rogue neighbors.

In addition to the mainstream festivities, I sometimes think about the Fourth of July in more historical terms. I do consider myself a genealogist, after all. Most family historians have probably attempted a little melting pot analysis of some kind. I have written prior posts on some of my background (pretty much Northern European) and the results of my mtDNA test (pretty much Northern European). I created the chart below breaking down the basic ancestry and emigration information on each of my 16 great-great-grandparents.



My paternal side (top half) is almost entirely of the Emerald Isle. My ancestors left Ireland for England, Scotland and the United States. It honestly surprised me a bit as I see them all grouped together: all eight of my paternal ancestors came to America in the same generation! And even though we often think famine regarding Irish ancestors, mine came quite a bit later (although some went to Scotland and/or England first). Facts are fun!

My maternal side (bottom half) is slightly more varied: German, Germans from West Prussia, a line from Scotland. The Prussian and German emigration in the mid-1800's was due to political unrest in Prussia and Eastern Europe. And then there are my "New Englanders I know to around 1800" lines. My Spencer line went from Rhode Island to Vermont in the Revolutionary War era, but I haven't yet found soldiers. I have a tenuous war connection through my Frederick line, but I haven't personally researched those facts. I know about these families to around 1800 in America. I have no idea of their ancestry or when these lines arrived here.

I only have one quarter of my ancestry who would have potentially been on American soil in 1776. America is truly a melting pot, as evidenced by my, and probably most of your, ancestors.

In honor of the 237th birthday of America, this is my American pie. A real fruit pie tastes better but this pie will keep me more fulfilled and happily researching for a long, long time.

Photo in the public domain

© 2013 Sally Knudsen

DNA: I'm U. Are You?

I have the patience of a saint, as the saying goes. I'm that person who gets a birthday card in the mail and tucks it away until my actual birthday. I could wait patiently to open Christmas gifts. Really.

So when 23andMe offered $99 DNA kits late last year, I decided I had waited long enough and ordered one. The kit arrived in mid-December and I let it sit for a few days. I opened the kit, registered, and sent in my sample. The expected turnaround was 2-3 weeks. I received an email asking for my patience, as the holiday backlog was forcing a delay in results. I finally received my email that... drumroll... the results were in!

After logging in, I still needed patience as some of the results took longer - like actual matches! Not a problem. In another week, I settled in to explore the final results. And they were not at all surprising as I know a good deal about all the branches of my family.

www.23andme.com

I am 99.7% European. Shocked, I tell ya. Part of that is some Eastern European thrown into the DNA mixer by my Prussian-descended grandma, who is almost 95. She's on the left, in case you have a hard time telling us apart ;)

I also learned my maternal haplogroup is:

U5a2b

Solid with my knowledge that I was researching up the right trees, I ventured around the site a little more. Honestly, I was not at all sure what to expect. Armed with these mtDNA results and a lot of research on my maternal lines, I do hope to find matches. I suppose the site is like a topic-specific social media site - people join but you don't know who you might find. Yet.

Postives:

Nice graphical results

Lists of possible cousins

Fun DNA surveys

Negatives:

Share everything to make connections

Few people reply

And my biggest negative is that I was hoping it showed me more. I read articles and blogs about connections and 'I share x % of DNA with this distant cousin,' and 'y strand of DNA matches this person so we confirm our relationship.' Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I'm not getting that warm fuzzy connected feeling. I am analytical - I want to see data. No doubt, being able to even perform this test is amazing, but I want to know more. 

Next step - talk my dad into taking a test for those elusive paternal Irish lines!

What are your experiences with testing? Have you made unexpected matches? Any tips for me, like I really missed something on the website? Do you match me (crosses fingers!)? 

Maybe I will learn that patience is inherited.

© 2013 Sally Knudsen

Dorks Across The Pond

I am pretty lucky to have an ancestral name like Dork.

Recently, I wrote several posts about my success trying to locate and piece together the various siblings of my great-great-grandfather, Otto Carl Dork in Lansing, Michigan. [Old posts here]

Otto's marriage record stated his parent's name were Carl Doerk and Carrie A. Popka. Otto was the last of his siblings to marry, and as luck would have it, older records didn't ask for parents names. But this record is a great start:

My next step was to search for immigration records. It took some creative searching due to name variations. I found the following family members on the ship Braunschweig that landed in New York on 22 April 1882.

page 16

Caroline Dork, 42, Prussia

Johanne Dork, 16, Prussia

page 21

Wilhelmine Derk, 19, Prussia

Maria Derk, 11, Prussia

Otto Derk, 8, Prussia

Rudolf Derk, 4, Prussia

Otto Derk, 5 months, Prussia

Auguste Papke, 64, Prussia

Ooh! These are clearly the right children. And their assumed mother, Caroline Dork, is the adult/parent of the group. Notably, there is no male parent and no older son Herman. Did one or both come ahead of the rest of the family? I have no idea who the baby Otto is. And who is Auguste Papke? Papke sure seems similar to Popka. A grandmother, perhaps? There are answers from the passenger lists, and now I have even more questions.  

To be continued...

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

How Many Ancestors?

I read with interest the current genealogy meme on various blogs: learning, for better or worse, how many actual documented ancestors a person has located. It is a sobering way to either celebrate who you have found, or wallow in pity about who you haven't!

So here is my ancestor analysis:

I have been searching, both pre-internet and with internet, for about 20 years. My total for 10 generations is just about 16%. That's pretty good by my calculations!

For a little fun, I tossed in a column showing how many photos of ancestors I have. Three percent is not bad, especially considering photography only reaches back to the early-to-mid 1800's.

Like most Americans, I have a very blended ancestry. My biggest portions are German (Prussian, Polish, and German) and Irish (some who migrated to Scotland and England), and there's a nice string of French-Canadian. The biggest problems are those New Englanders - finding pre-Revolution sources has caused me much grief.

By analyzing the raw numbers, I am amazed by the amount of data I have for my European roots. At the 9th generation point, also known as great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, I have documentation for 29 of my possible 256 ancestors. These are primarily people born the early 1700's.

• 12 ancestors are French-Canadian
• 3 ancestors are from a Massachusetts family
• 2 ancestors are from a New York family
• 6 ancestors are German
• 6 ancestors are West Prussian / Polish

Clearly, the wealth of records kept by churches and communities in Europe have given me a great insight into my overall ancestral picture. The best part is I know there is more data out there, but I have just not had the time to look...yet.

And you New Englanders, watch out because some day I WILL find you!

***

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Wordless Wednesday - Kopkau Sisters

Wilhelmina Kopkau Dork (left)

Elizabeth Louise Kopkau Erbe (center)

Helena Kopkau Evert (right)

(see their spouses here)

Lansing, Ingham, Michigan circa 1905

Wordless Wednesday - Otto Dork

Otto Carl Dork (left)

Herman Wilhelm Erbe, his brother-in-law (center)

Otto Christian Herman Evert, his brother-in-law (right)

Lansing, Ingham, Michigan circa 1905

Mystery Monday - Otto Is Not The Only Dork

When I last left off on my tracking of Otto Dork and his origins, he was living in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan. I knew his wife and children. But where did Otto emigrate from? Who was HIS family? The census records to this point named West Prussia most often as his place of birth. But not only did West Prussia encompass a very large area, its borders also moved though time and wars and rulers. It was a clue, but not a big one.

I knew Otto was born about 1870, but that gave a me huge 30-year gap between birth and a full-fledged family in 1900. None of the census records had anyone except immediate family members living with him. I did know that he had to have married in approximately 1892 using the years of his children's births as a starting point.

I decided to start a possible sibling search. The problem was, I had little clue as to who his siblings might be. Using the FamilySearch International Genealogical Index, I got a few hits on the surname "Dork" and the county of "Ingham" and marriages between 1880-1900. [These same records later were digitized, below.] That was as good a start as any!

• Johanna Doerk to Johann Beck in 1886
• Johanna born in Charlotten Werdez

• Auguste Doerke to Albert Emil Sanders in 1884
• Auguste born in Charlotteworth

• Carl Herman Doerk to Louisa Massuch in 1885
• Carl born in Charlottenwerth

• Otto Doerk to Minnie Kopkau in 1893
• Otto born in ... Germany (oh come on!!)
• Parents are Carl Doerk and Carrie Popka

Snips from www.familysearch.org: Michigan Marriages, 1868-1925

So the good news is that I know had three additional marriages for similarly named and aged Dork's who lived in Lansing. This new three were also born in most likely the same village in West Prussia. Thank you to the State of Michigan and whomever completed these records for providing the details!

The bad news is, while I have built a circumstantial case for Otto's siblings, there is no actual record tying them together.

To be continued...

***

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Tombstone Tuesday - Otto and Minnie Dork

Otto Carl Dork 1869-1949

Wilhelmina (Kopkau) Doerk 1871-1915

Some people may chuckle when walking or driving by this monument and think, "Gosh, that's an unfortunate name." I wander by and think, "Hello, great-great-grandparents."

Otto was born in the village of Charlottenwerder, in West Prussia. Wilhelmina, or "Minnie", was born in the neighboring village of Peterkau. They both died in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan and are buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Lansing.

***

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Surname Saturday - I Am A Dork (Really!)

One of my maternal lines is Dork - really. My great grandmother Lucy who, as a kid, I always thought was Lucille but is really Louise, was born Louise Wilhelmina Dork in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan in 1895. She is of full German descent, and more specifically, from a tiny village in Kreis Rosenberg in the eastern edge of West Prussia. It took me a long, long time to pinpoint her family, but it became a wonderful case study in my personal genealogy lessons.

Lucy's father, Otto Carl Dork, came to Michigan as a child in 1882 with his mother, grandmother, and siblings on the ship Braunschweig (see, really German!). They settled immediately in central Lansing, among many other Prussian families.

The surname itself has many iterations, which I suspect vary due to spelling and pronunciation differences from the German language. I've seen:

• Dork
• Doerk
• Dorke
• Derk
• Durk

I tend to stick with "Doerk" in my database, only because that seems to be the most encompassing spelling. My intuition is that it was spelled D-o-e-r-k and pronounced "Derk" but in America with the "o" first, just became "Dork".

Of course "Dork" has an unlikable connotation in today's society. My own children are at least vaguely familiar with their backgrounds and know that there is a Dork lineage. I tell them that if anyone ever calls you a dork, you can reply, "Yes I am"!

***

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Many Mothers

Happy (early) Mother's Day to my mother, grandmother (at a spry 93!), and all of our ancestral mothers before us.

Sally

Jo Ann

Dolores

Louise Wilhelmina Dork Hummel (1895-1973)

died Lansing, Ingham, Michigan

Wilhelmina Kopkau Dork (1871-1915)

died Lansing, Ingham, Michigan

Wilhelmina Stachel Kopkau (1842-1914)

died Lansing, Ingham, Michigan

Gottliebe Schmidtke Stachel (1815-1900)

died Lansing, Ingham, Michigan

Anna Maria Macziewska Schmidtke (1785-after 1854)

died Kreis Rosenberg, West Prussia

Christina Brant Macziewska (unknown)

died Kreis Rosenberg, West Prussia

***

© 2012 Sally Knudsen