On the Flip Side

Chris Hagerman: Two Face: The Flip Side roller coaster at Six Flags America. CC 3.0

Tactics, Strategies, Plans & Practice

I've been researching a lot lately, but not for my book on my mother's McBees, or even my "52 Ancestor" project. Those are not forgotten; just on the back burner for now. Instead, I decided to fill a hole in the tree, which has our grandchild as the base person. When we're all gone, it will be his. Because I knew very little about his mother's father's line, I decided to tackle that. It is 100% Russian Jews and we are using DNA as a major clue to families long separated by migration and other historical events. But there is a major roadblock: endogamy.

Endogamy is marriage within a specific group as required by custom or law. Jews in the Russian Empire were confined to the "Pale of Settlement" and could not live in cities or large towns. As a result, intermarriage normal in small communities was magnified, and lasted from 1791 to 1915.  

In practice, the other grandfather, "Steve," has an enormous number of close matches, mostly unknown to him. I've identified large groups with close ties to one another, but so far, their most recent common ancestors with Steve appear to be back in the Pale—somewhere. One major clue may be specific villages and towns listed on citizenship applications. So one of the first things I do when finding an immigrant is to tag them using the "Immigrant" Tree Tag. Then, as I find the documentation, note that in their profile, and also build tables of his closest matches, and those matchs' top matches. The goal is to divide them into four groups, one for each of his grandparents. It is messy, and will never work perfectly, because almost all the matches match with all the rest! As the ad says, 

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So, I enrolled in Diahan Southard's Endogamy class, and am deep in it, learning so much. 

Part way into the class, I encountered a snag. Steve has ordered a MyHeritage DNA kit, but has not yet submitted his sample. For the coursework I need to learn to use both MyHeritage and AncestryDNA tools to address endogamy. My son-in-law has a Quaker line which is also endogamous, and has tested at MyHeritage, so I've been jumping back and forth between the two trees. And the coursework continues! This is "genealogy on the flip side" which inspired the title of this post.   

I've been able to quickly switch because of the tactics, strategies, plans and practices taught by the experts that the South King County Genealogical Society Education team have brought in to teach us how to do better genealogy. I've also been learning skills and techniques writers of this blog have demonstrated. Our small groups have helped me and others learn how to craft good research questions, plans, locality guides, citations, and other helpful habits. 

I'm stubborn, and resisted each step towards improvement in my habits and routines, but eventually noticed that as I began to change, my research outcomes improved. Once a citation is written, I'm calm; I know I can find that record again. Once I begin analysis instead of rushing to the next thing, more of the findings make sense, and anomalies stand out.  

Also on the flip side, I've started to appreciate tiny, incomplete trees. Why? Because the person who made that little tree with few names, dates or records, is usually sharing the family they know. Not a record which may or may not fit, but the aunts, uncles, and grandparents whom they met, heard stories about, and remember. My son-in-law's closest DNA match has a tiny, incomplete tree, and it has been so much help! I knew at the outset that it was his non-Quaker side, but knew from previous research that this was a sprawling, confusing bunch, and this little tree has helped to clarify the lives and relationships of those ancestors and relatives. They were coping with poverty, lack of education and other challenges; without the tree, I was lost. Obituaries, which are secondary sources, have been a boon as well. I'm lucky that many of these people wrote and published them. Again, the information came from people who knew the deceased and their family. The clues in obits lead to primary records, which paired with DNA evidence can build a solid, reliable tree. I'll be able to identify "mystery matches" more easily.

Try genealogy on the flip side, and tell the rest of us about your experience!

Valorie Zimmerman

  

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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org

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