Oh my gosh, if your wife's great grandfather's people were from France OR Baden, the first problem you're going to have to deal with with ethnicity estimates, is they confuse Germany, France, and "Central Europe".? Baden is in the heart of central Europe, part of the Celtic heartland. What is more, people who came here from there, are likely to have migrated around Europe for some time, certainly between Switzerland, Baden and Wurttemberg, Alsace and Lorraine, and places farther afield, especially whatever you call that big part of Germany just east of? Wurttemburg.
the second problem is that those ethnicity estimates seem not to be highly reliable even given that the SNP's or segments they use to get that may vary across countries.? Identical triplets and twins test and get completely different results.
I suspect that you are also running into interference from long ago ethnicity.?? Maybe they have ethnicity from Sardinia, but atleast as likely they have First Farmer ancestry.? According to the Iceman's DNA, central Europe was full of it.? I'm supposed to have 8% recent ancestry from Scandinavia.? No, I have a lot of ancestry, some of it recent, some not, from East Anglia and Yorkshire.? That's Viking DNA.
The third problem, Baden has never been in France. It is across the river from land that was contested and various parts of it did or now belong to France at various times.
I would keep researching.? Do keep in mind that to the degree that they were in Baden, that is Germany, not France.
I would look into why they were moving around, since it could give you clues where to expect to find records.? Exactly when was this?
I'm also a little puzzled by what you say.? You're trying to identify his parents, but the census names them?? Atleast the father?
I would contact as many descendants of this family your matches descend from, as you can, because they could have more information.? If you haven't, construct a tree of them as well.
And, what did you find when you looked for naturalization records?
I've got a bad feeling that the family instability extends back to the old country.? Of course I do have a serious touch of Trumpitis at the moment.
Yours,
Dora Smith
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On 3/22/25 1:30 PM, Fred H Held via groups.io wrote:
Is there any way I can find In-Common-With DNA matches that contain specific ethnicity segments? Let me explain why.
We are attempting to find the family of my wife's great-grandfather who ran away from home as a teenager because of a mean step-mother. It's the same problem as finding the birth parents of an orphan.
The US census information indicates he was born in France 1845-1851 and his parents were born in France. We have a death certificate with a questionable name of his father and none for his mother.
We have several AncestryDNA ~30cM DNA matches, three of which have family trees that contain a similar surname as my wife's GGF. In fact all the ICW matches with family trees (but one) descend from the same couple in Baden. We also have a MyHeritage 74cM match with a French woman who also links to the same couple in Baden.
From the above information we have narrowed the family of wife's GGF to one couple (a son of the above couple). Athough all the known children of this couple are recorded born in Germany, two of their German children do have a trail in Haute-Savoie, France. We speculate that my wife's unknown 2GGF was born when the family lived in France, specifically Haute-Savoie. However, so far, the family has not been found there. (Note: none of the above ~30 cM DNA matches are from this branch of the family and the French woman is from his second marriage.)
I have little faith in ethnicity tests. In my own case one company, FTDNA, is totally off base for me, but AncestryDNA is reasonably close to my research. However, when looking at my wife's AncestryDNA ethnicity she shows ~1% Sardinian (the island off the west coast of Italy). I found this quite strange until I researched the history of the French departments of Haute-Savoie and Savoie. It indicates they were owned by the powerful Kingdom of Sardinia until the mid 1800s. Two of my wife's siblings show 4% and 5% Sardinian DNA at FTDNA.
This brings us to the conclusion that my wife's unknown 2GGF was born in Haute-Savoie and married a local girl (of Sardinian ancestry) and had a family there, one of which was my wife's GGF.
Is there any way to identify the Sardinian DNA segments in the ethnicity so I can isolate other potential DNA cousins (with no family trees) that might be other descendants of my wife's unknown 2GGF and 2GGM? Or is there any way I can identify other DNA matches for her that also have Sardinian DNA (in other words an ICW search with an ethnicity instead of a person.)?
Valorie Zimmerman