A Breakthrough in Pommern!

One thing leads to another

I was approached by the Pomeranian Special Interest Group (based in California) to do a presentation via Zoom on Pomeranians in Australia on Saturday afternoon January 22 their time or Sunday morning 23 January Brisbane time.

After a quick introduction to the history of European settlement in Australia and the arrival of significant groups of Germans from 1838 onwards, I spoke about a number of "sample families" from the former Kreis Lauenburg in Pomerania who had settled in Queensland: Kopittke and Rehbein who migrated to Maryborough but settled in Bundaberg and intermarried; Paradies who migrated to Bowen and moved to Charters Towers; and my own great-grandparents Daniel and Charlotte Kopittke, their son Gustav and daughter Auguste who migrated to Brisbane and settled at Geebung, now a Brisbane suburb.

To my utter surprise, Uwe Kerntopf from Germany posted a comment in the Chat section "Daniel KOPITTKE and Charlotte born JESCHKE married 1838 in Garzigar, County Lauenburg." Now these were indeed my great-grandparents! But why did I not already have the details of their marriage?

When Daniel died in 1880 in Brisbane, my grandfather Gustav was the informant for the death certificate and gave Daniel's age as 70, that he was born in “Poman, Prussia”, and that he had married Charlotte at Lauenburg. When Charlotte died in 1884, Gustav was again the informant and gave her age as 73, that she was born in “Gotzlow, Pommern, Prussia”, and that she had married Daniel at “Masson, Pommern, Prussia”. I thought that “Masson” might be a corruption of Klein Massow, but with Gotzlow being near Stettin, I thought that to be an error.

The information from the marriage record now told me that at the time of marriage (6 April 1838), Daniel was described as Knecht in Zelasen (servant in Zelasen) aged 27, Charlotte as Magd in Belgardt (maid in Belgard) aged 24, daughter of George Jeschke verstorbener Tagelöhner in Chotzlow (deceased day-labourer in Chotzlow). 

This would seem to solve the issue of Charlotte's birth place - apparently Chotzlow had been wrongly heard as Gotzlow - Chotzlow is now known by its Polish name Chocielewko and lies about 12 km by road to the south-west of Garzigar which is now known as Garczegorze. Belgard, now known as Bialogarda, lies about 9 km north-north-west of Garzigar; and Zelasen, now known as Żelazna, lies about 18 km to the north-east of Garzigar. I wonder how they met!

Uwe directed my attention to the database at Stolper Heimatkreise e.V. which contained the details of my great-grandparents marriage. 

https://www.stolp.de/globalindex.html?

With some 4½ million records in the database, this site is well worth a visit. With the use of wildcards, _ replacing any one character and % replacing any number of characters, the string "K_p%t%k_" entered in the surname field produced 1562 hits which could be variants of the surname "Kopittke".

So a big thank you to Uwe Kerntopf for reminding me of the Stolper Heimatkreise site, and for the record of the marriage of my great-grandparents. And another big thank you to the numbers of volunteers who have contributed to the Stolper Heimatkreise site!

DNA matches to German families - is it possible?

My wife and I have been researching our respective families for some thirty years. Back in the "old days" research meant walking through cemeteries looking for headstones, visiting the Queensland State Archives looking through microfilms, card indexes, and dusty bundles of Land Selection or Probate files, or visiting an LDS Family History Centre to read microfiche or microfilms. There were no online indexes then that could be viewed from the comfort of the home.

Of course things have changed and so much more information is readily accessible, although those of us who are used to visiting archives realise that 'it's not all online' by any stretch of the imagination.

Recent years have seen aggressive marketing of DNA testing, which the advertisements seem to imply, will use your genetic makeup to identify the places from which your ancestors came. Our thirty or so years of research had identified our ancestral places of origin, so we saw that aspect of DNA research as a sideline only. In fact it would be interesting to compare the speculation of our origins with the hard documentary evidence that we had painstakingly assembled.

We thought that the greatest benefit would be through the ability of the programs to compare our DNA samples with the millions of other samples and so to find other people who might be (distantly) related to us. We knew that small matching segments of DNA might match by chance rather than there being any real relationship.

Ethnicity Estimate

So how do my results from the test with Ancestry stack up against the research? Its Ethnicity Estimate is shown here:

Ethnicity Estimate for Eric Kopittke from Ancestry.com.au

How do these values compare with the evidence?

• My father's parents were both born in the former eastern parts of the Kingdom of Prussia, one in Pomerania, the other in West Prussia. Since World War 2, these areas have been in Poland. They were settled by slavic peoples with later German migration from the west. Since "Europe East" includes Poland as well as other areas, 48% is close to the documented 50%.
• My maternal grandfather was the son of migrants from the northern and western parts of Germany, one from Schleswig-Holstein, the other from North Rhine-Westphalia. I can therefore trace 25% of my ancestry to parts of modern day Germany. Since 'Europe West' includes Germany, the 30% is probably a little high.
• In Schleswig-Holstein there was a mixing of German, Danish, and Friesian peoples, and some of the ancestors of my great-grandmother had Danish names - perhaps that is where the 10% Scandinavian came from.
• Both of my maternal grandmother's parents were from Sussex in England, with their ancestral roots from villages near Lewes. They constitute 25% of my ancestry so is interesting that 'Great Britain' has only 6% listed.

Those values can be misleading, however. On clicking on each, the following ranges are revealed:

Region	Estimate	Range
Europe East	48%	36% – 58%
Europe West	30%	7% – 54%
Scandinavia	10%	0% – 28%
Great Britain	6%	0% – 21%

There is a large uncertainty with the quoted 'Ethnicity Estimate' values and that must always be kept in mind when looking at such results!

Genetic Communities

Ancestry explains its recently introduced Genetic Communities in these words:

Genetic Communities™ are groups of AncestryDNA members who are connected through DNA most likely because they descend from a population of common ancestors, even if they no longer live in the area where those ancestors once lived. For example, some Genetic Communities trace their roots back to groups of people who were isolated geographically. Mountains, rivers, lack of roads, or other barriers made it likely that each new generation would marry someone who lived close to home. Others have their roots in a groups who typically married others of the same religion or ethnic group. In each case, these groups came to share a significant amount of DNA. Modern-day descendants who inherited some of that DNA make up Genetic Communities.   

Ancestry has identified two Genetic Communities that match my DNA.

Genetic Communities for Eric Kopittke

A map is produced to illustrate these communities.

Map of Genetic Communities for Eric Kopittke

Clicking 'Eastern Europeans' produces a more detailed map along with a general description of the history of the region.

Eastern European Genetic Community

There is also a CONNECTION button which when clicked allows you to display the details of the others in the same Genetic Community. Three of my matches were estimated to be '4th - 6th cousins' and twelve at '5th - 8th cousins'. Unfortunately most had not supplied a family tree so there was no easy way to see whether the matches were real or just a random chance.

One had a tree with 4,904 names, and on checking the tree, I found mention of Caroline LATZ, a daughter of my grandmother's cousin. Caroline had married John RUHWEDEL in Queensland and it now became obvious that they had migrated to the Chicago area in the USA. That solved a mystery for me, and I could then provide details of Caroline's ancestors who were from small villages and estates in the former Prussian province of West Prussia. It turned out that my match was my third cousin three times removed - there is also a match to the parent of this person but interestingly that match does not appear in my genetic communities.

So the Ethnicity Estimate results are interesting but with the large uncertainty should not be taken too seriously. On the other hand the Genetic Community results can potentially point you to other distant relatives, but discovering what the relationship is depends on the other party posting enough of a family tree to allow connections to be made.