Ancestry.com DNA test - results marginal

A ways back in the article [ http://weekendgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/01/going-for-my-y37.html ] I blogged about sending in my autosomal DNA kit for my Y37. I also did an Ancestry.com autosomal test too. I'm sure you all have been dying to know what I've learned. So I'll share it with you below. Sadly its not too much, but there are some interesting aspects.

First, my ethnicity estimate was about what I expected. Irish plus Eastern Europe. I expected to see more Germany from my Great-Grandfather Albert Herman Schmidt (from Lehe, Bremerhaven, Bremen, Germany b 1894 ) but that didn't surface. I realize Bremerhaven is Prussian, and actually sits inside the circle for Eastern Europe in my results so ithe Western edge of the Eastern Europ area makes sense.

So what about the DNA results matching me to individuals. For me, sadly, not much good. Ancestry is only just now accepting DNA tests from outside the USA, which limits them to who is engaged.  Being a relatively 'recent' immigrant clan (1900s) I'd hoped for more European.   My biggest frustration was people don't upload trees or names so you cannot correlate data. Pretty much limits the usefulness of the DNA test to only whatever name they have now.

Some folks keep their trees 'locked' so you can't see their data. I submitted a suggestion to ancestry to let me lock out those who lock their trees to me, but didn't hear anything back. A user named 'bandito2007' emailed me to ask what I knew about a 'Maytor Healy'. I emailed him back, with 'hey, you let me look at your tree and I'll have some ideas'. Total silence. I now call the locked tree in ancestry the bandito007 effect.   Aka locked out of good information that should be shared. All in all, I didn't get much out of ancestry, across my tree, or my mother and father in laws. Probably won't buy any more Ancestry DNA test.

So did I get anything good out of my Ancestry DNA test. Yes, I transferred my autosomal test to http://www.familytreedna.com . There I have gotten some very interesting results. But that's another story, along with my Y37 followons.

Anyone out there had any luck with Ancestry.com DNA tests?

Marriage record for Patrick Dominick Francis BOWE and Mary Catherine POWERS

Ancestry can give you some hints that you then need to followup on to get more information. I found a marriage record for Patrick Bowe and Mary Powers, my wife's g-grandparents.

The Ancestry hint read as follows:
New York, New York, Marriage Index 1866-1937  about Patrick F Bowe 
Name: Patrick F Bowe 
Gender: Male 
Marriage Date: 21 Jun 1903 
Marriage Place: Manhattan, New York, USA 
Spouse: Mary Powers 
Certificate Number: 12755 

Given the certificate number, I could have ordered the marriage record from NYC directly via http://www.nyc.gov/dorforms/marriagecert.jsp .  Once nice thing about this site is it lets you use a credit card (unlike some other nyc sites which want money orders, grrr).

But... last summer I made a research run the Family History Library in Utah.  While there I obtained the marriage record from their files.  Note the parents names, church address, and current address in the records.  Good stuff...

Exerpted details...
Marriage license, state of new york, borough of manhattan
received June 27, 1903
cert#12755
Patrick F Bowe
Mary C Powers
Witness: WJ Veale
witness: Florence McKenna
Performed by M. Cunniff
date: June 21 1903
Patrick F Bowe of 519 East 81st, age 25, white single, born in Ireland to Thomas Bowe and Mary A Flynn, first marriage
Mary C Powers of 519 East 81st, age 23, white, sing,e, from Ireland, born to James Bowe and Mary Halley, first marriage
Official RC Clerygyman Michael Hunniff of 413 East 79th Street [St Monica's Roman Catholic Church]


Note the address given is for the marriage - 413 East 79th - is for St Monica's Roman Catholic Church in NYC.  The church is still there, and you can order records via http://www.stmonicanyc.org/record-search . 

Next step, sending a check to St Monica's!  I'll keep you posted.  This will be my first time ordering documents from a church.

  

 

Jonas Zvingis and Marijona Davidauskaite - Jewish connection plus Russian Soldier - 3x Grandparents

I had researcher Vincas B do some digging through the http://www.epaveldas.lt/ church records for me. He found the following goodie!

Viekšniai church, same parish in 18 of January, 1883. Priest Antanas Petrošius married Reserve Private Juozapas Žvingis, single, 31 years old ( b.1852 ) from Pluogai? village, son of peasants Jonas Žvingis and Marijona Davidauskaitė, legal spouses and peasant Morta Mileškaitė, single, 22 years old (b 1861) from Mažeikiai village, Viekšniai parish, daughter of Juozapas Mileška and Monika Vaitiekute, legal spouses. Witnesses were Juozapas Degutis, Pranas Milevičius, Stanislovas Januškis and others.

Pluogai might also be Krakei

Juozapas Zvingis is the father of Juozas Zvingis who migrated to the United States in 1914.  Aka Juozapas Zvingis and Marijona Davidauskaite , as well as Juozapas Mileska and Moinka Vaitiekute are my great-great-great-grandparents.

I remember my grandfather Edward Laukaitis, talking with my grandmother Bertha Laukaitis nee Zvingis about her Jewish grandmother.  The name Davidauskaite is a Jewish name in Lithuania, aka it’s a Litvak name.  The American equivalent is Davidson.  The Polish equivalent is Dawidowicz or Davidowicz . I'm betting Marijona is the relative they were talking about.

Also interesting is Juozapas is listed as a Reserve Private in the Russian army.  Lithuania was a vassal state (occupied territory) of Russian from 1795 to 1915.  Conscription of males was mandatory.  In many of the old pictures I have my relatives are wearing entire or pieces of Russian Uniforms. 

Zvingis / Davidson / Dawidowicz / Davidauskaite Marriage in 1883 - Am I Part Jewish?

I had researcher Vincas B do some digging through the http://www.epaveldas.lt/ church records for me. He found the following goodie!

Viekšniai church, same parish in 18 of January, 1883. Priest Antanas Petrošius married Reserve Private Juozapas Žvingis, single, 31 years old from Pluogai? village, son of peasants Jonas Žvingis and Marijona Davidauskaitė, legal spouses and peasant Morta Mileškaitė, single, 22 years old from Mažeikiai village, Viekšniai parish, daughter of Juozapas Mileška and Monika Vaitiekute, legal spouses. Witnesses were Juozapas Degutis, Pranas Milevičius, Stanislovas Januškis and others.

Pluogai might also be Krakei

Juozapas Zvingis is the father of Juozas Zvingis who migrated to the United States in 1914.  Aka Juozapas and Marijona are my great-great-great-grandparents.

I remember my grandfather Edward Laukaitis, talking with my grandmother Bertha Laukaitis nee Zvingis about her Jewish grandmother.  The name Davidauskaite is a Jewish name in Lithuania, aka it’s a Litvak name.  The American equivalent is Davidson.  The Polish equivalent is Dawidowicz or Davidowicz .

Also interesting is Juozapas is listed as a Reserve Private in the Russian army.  Lithuania was a vassal state (occupied territory) of Russian from 1795 to 1915.  Conscription of males was mandatory.  In many of the old pictures I have my relatives are wearing entire or pieces of Russian uniforms.

Ona Zvingaite, my great-great Aunt. Death record from fever....

Death record for my great-great Aunt, Ona Zvingaite / Zvingis / Zvingys....  Ona is Anna in English.  Ona is the daughter of Juozas Zvingis Sr, my great-great-grandfather.  His son and her brother Juozas Zvingis emigrated to the USA 100 years ago.  Zvingis may also be spelled Zvingys.

The record is handwritten Cyrillis...

Ona Žvingaitė, daughter of peasants Juozapas and Morta Žvingis, died 19 years old, fever, in 19 of February, 1904 and buried in cemetery of Tirkšliai parish in 21 of February.    

By verbal story, Juozas Zvingis Sr was drafted into the Japo-Russian war.  He deserted back to Lithuanian.  When he arrived he had back scarlet fever or smallpox.  He and five of the children died from the disease  Ona is probably one of the children that died at this time. 

Delaney and the 1916 Easter Uprising

The Irish rarely talk about the bad things.  I've notice there's alot of supression and bury of ugly things in the past.  Of course, naturally, my Irish kin loved to celebrate all the good, and sometimes loved to celebrate just for the joy of celebrating.

Watching the trailers for the upcoming film, A Terrible Beauty, about the 1916 Easter Rising in April 1916 in Dublin made me curious about what the Delaney's roles were during the 1916 event.  

Theresa Delaney emigrated to the USA with her Sister Ellen Delaney ( who married Michael Cummins eventually ) on Sept 19, 1916, a relatively short period after the rising.  I'd always wondered about the timing of the move, as they were from Dublin.

In one of those wonderful 'family researcher moments', my 1st Cousin 1x removed, S. Schmidt (grandson of Theresa Delaney) had sent me a note about our the Delaney's at the same time.  [thanks so much S.]  Note  a similar story had been shared to me by Katie R., who was the grand-neice of Theresa.  As her story was relayed by Lillian Delaney, her grandmother, this was a great point of convergence.

"I had one on my friends over to see Grandma. Everything went really well with their families being from the same areas. That is until she found out he was protestant (orange). At that point I saw a side of her I didn't think she possessed. She was fighting  mad and literally threw him out of the house, the only comment was he wasn't ever to come there when she was present. No further explanation. When my father found out he said that her father [uncle or grandfather] and brother were dragged out in the middle of the night by what I believed he called brown shirts.  They were hung for being part of the Irish Army (not IRA)[jeh: prob Irish Volunteers] that had staged an unplanned uprising that was squashed by the British and Protestants.  Apparently it was a bloody couple of days with the Irish making themselves felt. They weren't present as most of the loosely formed units, soldiers back from WWI, weren't."

More info on the impact of the uprising on non-combatants can be found here - http://www.easter1916.net/civilians.htm .

This is one of my genealogy "brick walls".  

I don't even know their names.  This will be a tough one to dig out.  This particular issue may unfortunately (koff koff) require me to spend some time in Dublin researching. 

Any ideas?

[Theresa Delaney was the daughter of Andrew Delany and Catherine O'Brien of Dublin.  She had sisters Ellen Bridget (1897) and Elizabeth Lillian (1904).  She had a half sister Sarah (1893) by Andrew Delany and Mary Anne Cowley (1866-1895). Catherine's OBrien's parents were Michael O'Brien/Ellen Kelly]

Zvingys as well as Zvingis - Who'da Thunk

Had dinner with a Lithuanian lady named Virginia this week.  I'd uploaded my autosomal DNA to familytreedna.com and we'd matched out as 4th cousins.  After a few conversations, she was travelling through Florida and we got together for dinner.  I brought along my Uncle Danny.

Humor point.  I'd asked if I could bring my Uncle, and they said sure.  They had a vision of someone 80 years old.  Danny is only 5 years older than me.

So I was showing her my tree, and she pointed out Zvingis in Lithuania would probably be spelled Zvingys in many situations ( the Z would have a hat on it too ).  Interesting.  Going to have to do some doc revisions.

So are we related?  Probably.  Her father was from Tirksliai, Mazeikiai, Lithuania, same as my great-grandfather, Juozas Zvingis / Zvingys.  

And her mother was from Vieksniai, Mazeikiai, Lithuania, where my  Great-Great Grandmother, Anna Petrauskas, as well as my Great Grandmother, Martha Balvocius was from.  

Virginia didn't have a good fell for her family tree beyond her parents.  Quite a few wars and such if you've ever read up on Lithuanian history.  Maybe one day we'll figure it out. Hoping I can get to Lithuania one day and dig in, leaving a real document for my kids.