Long Segment--But No Close Connection

Particularly when dealing with endogamy, where it is difficult to tell apart cousins who are actually relatively closely related as opposed to those who are very distantly related in multiple ways, a good metric to hone in on matches who may actually be related in genealogically-traceable time is the size of the largest shared segment of DNA.  I've had good success finding people who are actually related or at least are from a very close geographic proximity to one of my ancestral towns, even if we can't find the actual paper trail connection.

But sometimes those large segments may be passed down for many generations.  Several of my kits--all related on my maternal grandmother's side--share the same large segments with several kits administered by a man named Luc.

Luc's Tested Family Members--With DNA Shared With My Relatives

Another Generation of Diamonds?

I had tested my father's Y DNA several years ago.  As is not uncommon for Jews (who have not had surnames for too long), he had no matches with the surname Diamond besides his second cousin who I'd also tested--but had lots of matches with lots of people with Jewish surnames.  But then about 2 months ago a new match popped up--with the surname Diamond.

The first match is Uncle Leibish's grandson.  The second is this new match

Tkatch-ing Up to the Sanshucks

Through my Shpikov/Krasnoye project, I've obtained lots of vital records for both towns over the past few years.  After a first large batch of records helped me to unravel my Sanshuck and Brandman families, the few years' worth of records I got since then weren't too helpful--or so I thought.

Ukraine SIG obtained a large batch of records recently (an entire list of what they got can be seen here), and I got very excited to see some Krasnoye records listed which were new to our project.  My initial scan through the documents was disappointing, as I didn't see any Sanshucks or Brandmans.  But then I looked more closely.  There were vital events for some Tkatch brothers--and the names of those brothers, their wives, and their father exactly matched those of Krasnoye's Sanshuck brothers.  I looked back at records I'd transcribed previously and there they were again.

Marriage of Yitzchok son of Yisrael Tkatch (my 5th great uncle) and Reiza daughter of Dovid Grupenman, 1842
(This isn't from the latest batch of records since I can't share those images--but I've had this for a few years without knowing they were really Sanshucks!)

IAJGS Conference, Days 2-3

(I'll be blogging about IAJGS2017 all week.  You can see all IAJGS2017 posts here and posts for all IAJGS conferences I've attended here.)

I made the highlights clip for Day 1!  You can see it here (I'm right at the beginning), and you can also see the whole talk if you have a LIVE! subscription.

On Monday (day #2) of the conference, I started off with a FamilySearch breakfast (shout out to them for including boxes of cold cereal & milk, so I was actually able to eat something) where they discussed the potential for FamilySearch and some of the project/SIG leaders to work together.  Some of the SIGs already have agreements for joint projects with FamilySearch.

My Second Talk of the Conference

IAJGS2017, Day 1

(I'll be blogging about IAJGS2017 all week.  You can see all IAJGS2017 posts here and posts for all IAJGS conferences I've attended here.)

Today got off to an early (6:15AM) flight to Orlando.  We were at the hotel by 9:30, and then it was off for registration and to start the day!

All Registered!

IAJGS2017 Coming Up!

I'm off to Orlando for the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies' annual conference!  I'll be doing several different kinds of presentations, including one of which will be livestreamed.  Details are as follows:

Rosenfeld Connection

(Note: I'm giving three presentations at next week's IAJGS conference.  Hope to see some readers there!)

Back in August 2014, I wrote about two brothers (David and Chaim/Hyman Rosenfeld) who were related in some manner to the Diamond family.  When they came to America, they were on the same ship with Morris Dorfman (husband of my grandfather's Aunt Shaindel/Jennie) and some other relatives, and they were going to join their cousin L. Diamond, who was my grandfather's Uncle Leibish (Louis Diamond in America).

Rosenfeld Brothers' Ship Manifest; 1909