DNA Painter is a very cool tool that allows you to visualize DNA that you inherited from specific ancestors. But when you're from an endogamous population like I am, there are some potential pitfalls for which you need to account.
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| DNA I Inherited From Different Ancestors |
My grandmother Sonia was close to her paternal grandmother Ronia. In fact, when Sonia's parents moved to the village where her maternal grandfather lived, my grandmother and her sister remained in the city of Horochov with Ronia. Ronia was a city woman who did not want to move to a village, and the girls stayed with her to continue at their school. (You can read my grandmother's perspective on that time here.) In any case, I had no documentation of Ronia's life, other than what my grandmother had told me about her.
Recently on JewishGen, there was a post about "Documents from Volyn, Ukraine." Since my father's parents are both from Volyn (Volhynia), I took a look. This post mentioned a site (https://en.volynia.com/) with indexes of various documents from this area. The site lists surnames included in each set of documents and in the list of those registered to vote in Horochov in 1938 there was a Bajcz--my grandmother's maiden name. I reached out to the site owner and asked if this was Avraham Bajcz, my great grandfather. He said it wasn't--but it was a woman named Bronia. Hmmmm..... Bronia/Ronia were very very similar. I ordered a copy of that record.
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| Bronia Bajcz Voter Registration |
