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We have results from a first cousin

May27

One of my cousins (half Norwegian) on Dad’s side (all Norwegian) just got his results. So I made this chart comparing myself to my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cousins on Dad’s side. Mind you, the 2nd cousin is on Dad’s paternal side while the third cousin is on his mom’s side.

Kitty's DNA versus her cousins

Kitty’s DNA versus her cousins

My brother’s chart looks very similar except no X match of course. Notice the very large X match I have with my first cousin which would come from his mother and my Dad’s mother, 57.3 cM. Interesting to see this as compared to my Dad ….

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It’s a Match!! Lars Monsen’s ancestors are found.

May10

The direct male line descendant of Ole Monsen Titland  (1702-1764) is a Y-chromosome DNA 34/37 match to my Dad, who we thought was also a descendant of Ole. Now we know he is!

Thank you so much cousin Sigmund for finding a distant cousin in direct paternal descent to test.

This story was written up a few months back in a post here but we were waiting on the DNA Y-chromosome STR test to prove our theory. Now it is proven.

Here are the deeper details of the three markers that do not match:

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We have found our ancestor Lars Monsen!

Mar6

Due to DNA testing, in a round about way, we have probably solved the brick wall of our ancestor Lars Monsen who was born in the Bergen area and lived in Kristiansand, Norway. His great-grandson Lauritz (later Lawrence Josiah Munson), my grandfather, came to Brooklyn, NY, with his family when he was six. That story is posted on this page about the Monsens at my family history site.

Lars Monsen had been our brick wall for a long time since it is a common name in the Bergen area although not, we thought, in southern Norway. Well it turns out there really were two men named Lars Monsen in Kristiansand at that time. One was Lars Monsen Suldahl (thus from Suldahl) and ours was Lars Monsen or Mognsen Aastvedt from Eidsvaag (just north of Bergen)

Here is the story. Dad’s Y DNA matched almost 6000 people at 12 markers on the family tree DNA site. So I used the Ysearch site to look for only Bergen area matches. I contacted those two people and heard back from one. Next we both upgraded to 37 markers to see if we still matched. In the meantime our match, Sigmund, posted some queries in the best Norwegian forums for Bergen and Kristiansand areas and the local historian/genealogy experts weighed in and found a likely candidate for our Lars. Sigmund now found us a male line descendant from Lar’s grandad and sent him a Y DNA test kit! [UPDATE: they matched, see http://blog.kittycooper.com/2013/05/its-a-match-lars-monsens-ancestors-are-found/ }

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Norwegian Naming Practices and Genealogical Resources

Nov11

So as I find more and more DNA matches with Norwegian-American relatives who tell me “Oh we have an Andressen or a Larsen too,” how do I explain what little use that is? I try saying, “Well in Norway before the late 1800s most people used their father’s name (so Jonsen means the son of Jon) and perhaps their farm name for a surname. So please tell me what locality your family was from and the farm name if you know it.”  Plus Per might be Peder in a different document and other names have other variations. Still one can’t complain, there are an enormous number of  Norwegian records online and the records go back to at least the 1500s in most localities.

I have found two resources which explain the naming practices quite well:

John Føllesdal also has an excellent website hosted by ancestry.com explaining how to research your ancestors in Norway.

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Ashkenazi Genetic Pile Ups?

Nov8

Well I thought I had found a real cousin on the German Jewish side due to a few common surnames but no luck finding the relationship yet. Sadly there is a large match on our X but the common surnames are not on a branch where X could come from. Of course one of the problems in German Jewish genealogy is that all but a few prominent families had no fixed surnames (they used their father’s name) until 1813/14.

Even worse she mainly matches me on segments that are what I call “Ashkenazi Pile Ups” or locations where there are well over 30 people matching me but not my Dad for more than 5cm.  By comparison I notice only one such pile up on my 100% Norwegian father’s matches at chromosome 9, at about 80,000. But that will be the topic for another post.

These are the three pile ups my new distant cousin matches:

Chromosome 2:  45 matches for this segment at 23andme

150.1 163.3 9.9CM

Chromosome  4: 80 matches for this segment at 23andme

some start at 18.1 and some end at 25.0

19.4 24.8 7.2CM

Chromosome X: about 30 matches for me, 50 for my brother…. hmmm

a few are longer than this

123.4 137.8 14.1CM

For those of you who are wondering where to find this data on 23andme you can download all the segments that match yours with the name of the donor (most will be anonymous) by going to “ancestry labs” under ‘My Results” and clicking on “Countries of Ancestry.”  Scroll down the page to the long blue button where you can download a CSV of all your matches. [updated 27 dec 2013 – n.b. you can get this data and more  by using the http://DNAgedcom.com site to do the downloads]

There are a few more pile ups in my and my brother’s matches than these …

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