Saturday, September 21, 2024

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Were Your Parents Related to Each Other?

This is by far one of the easiest questions I've ever answered for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Were your parents related to each other?  Do your paternal and maternal lines have any surnames in common?  Are they related or is there no known connection?  Are there possible connections?

2.  Share about your real or potential relationships between your parents in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!]

My paternal and maternal lines have absolutely no connection whatsoever.

My mother was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish, and that clearly shows with my DNA matches on every site with which I've tested.

I used to think my father was half English (his mother's side) and half German (his father's side).  When I showed through Y-DNA testing that Mr. Sellers was not my grandfather's biological father, that took out the German that I had researched for many years.  I still don't know who my biological great-grandfather was, nor do I know what his ethnicity was (although AncestryDNA told me I'm 12 1/2% Irish, so maybe?), but there is no indication of any sort that he was Jewish.

I can say with confidence there is no known connection and no possible connection between my paternal and maternal lines.

Common surnames are harder to rule out entirely, only because one great-grandfather on my mother's side changed his name to Gordon after immigrating to the United States.  Since my father does have British ancestry, I can't completely rule out Welsh, and there might be a Gordon some generations back.  On the other hand, I'm pretty sure any Welsh Gordon ancestor of mine wouldn't have had the name Gorodetsky originally.

Maybe whenever I learn who my biological great-grandfather was, I'll find that there are connections between my paternal grandfather's and grandmother's lines.

I'm sure there are connections between my maternal grandfather's and grandmother's lines.  The odds are in favor of it.

4 comments:

  1. Your lines are as disparate as mine. No way to connect unless in ancient times. I'd say you have some Irish because 12.5% is quite a bit!

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    Replies
    1. I would agree more about the Irish if I weren't in the same camp as Judy Russell, where I look at the country-level information as "cocktail party conversation." I guess I really need to send in my LivingDNA test!

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  2. It is certainly easier to work with DNA results when your parents are not related.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agreed! And it would be even easier if one half weren't Ashkenazi Jewish, where we're *all* related!

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