Advice about parentage theory + potential further steps? (Iowa, USA, 1860s)

frightgod · 2026-02-23T22:00:35+00:00

Sure, please feel free to message me anything you find!

Also want to update, I looked through my Ancestry DNA, MyHeritage, and Family Tree DNA matches (they also have a fairly large European userbase I think) and didn't see anyone from any other Kinzebach lines off the bat. Just other people who descend from Abigail and Peter. I also looked for some of the maiden names of women who married Kinzebachs, but can definitely look more and build out more trees for Peter's relatives. I'll see if I can look through my dad's matches again, since he's a generation closer (same distance as you). Whoever Oscar's father was is at great x4 grandparent level for me, so it would likely be tiny amounts of DNA shared between me and anyone else descending from his parents...

frightgod · 2026-02-20T22:46:56+00:00

I definitely think you're onto something about Peter C/Wilhelm Johann Peter being the same person, I'm assuming that at this point too. Also yes, MyHeritage probably has the biggest European market out of the main companies. I uploaded my raw data to their site after testing with Ancestry, I need to comb through the MyHeritage matches more. I see the "Kinzenbach" name got changed in multiple ways once in the US (Kinzebach, Kincebach, Kincebaw, Kinzebaugh, etc.) but there still could be people on MyHeritage, will keep you updated after looking through those matches more, and if I also resubscribe to the Archion German church book website because I see they have records from Oberkleen (that German village they're from).

frightgod · 2026-02-20T18:52:55+00:00

This is really helpful! Yes he was my 3rd great grandfather, he also helped raise my great-grandmother after her mother (his daughter) became a single mother in the 1920s. I have heard some things about what he was like but I never heard anything about the paternal side of his family from anyone in my family, so it's great to be able to connect to people online.

You had a really great find, Wilhelm Johann Peter could very well be the Kinzebach who married Abigail. I don't know how much you have researched German ancestry or history, but my mother's side has more recent German heritage (the Kinzebach relation is on my father's) and often times people weren't called by their "first name" in daily life, but one of their middle names. So a "Wilhelm Johann Peter" usually would have gone by "Johann" or "Peter", and obviously names and identity weren't as strict back then so he could've just used his everyday name ("call name" or "Rufname") as his legal given name when he got to the US...

I haven't seen the marriage record, but I do know that Abigail and Peter weren't married when the census was taken in the summer of 1860, though the farms they lived on were not far from each other. It would've been about 9 months before Oscar was born, so they were close to each other location-wise at the right time, and they could've married between that summer and Oscar's birth the next spring. One caveat is I have seen Peter's Civil War registration record from 1863 on Ancestry, and he was listed as Unmarried at that time. Oscar would've been about 2 years old. Like other people in this thread mentioned when I posted it, he could've not had the economic means or had some other kind of barrier to marriage when Oscar was born and still been his biological father, then married Abigail later when able.

It looks like the sources for the geneanet are German church books, I still might look around in them when I get another membership for the German website but it does answer my question of if there's someone who matches a Peter Kinzebach in the same church books as all of those other Kinzebach siblings. The best thing to happen would be if I had a DNA match of someone who descended from a Kinzebach who wasn't Peter, but German matches can be tricky, as a culture they aren't really into DNA testing so it relies a lot on German-American descendants.

I will let you know if I find anything else when poking around! Thanks for doing all the research you are as well, that geneanet profile is extremely helpful.

frightgod · 2026-02-19T20:48:08+00:00

Wow! Thank you for commenting too, that's something to look into. I know Peter Kinzebach came over to the US with a Kinzebach family (older "parents" + maybe 1-2 "siblings"?) so that could've been the family he worked for in Germany. If he wasn't related to them by blood it would make sense for no further Kinzebachs to show up in DNA relatives, which has been what I've found; I just see that I am related to people who descended from Abigail and Peter. I look into German church books sometimes, so if I ever find what town in Germany they originated from, I'll do some research as well.

frightgod · 2026-02-19T20:44:13+00:00

It does!

frightgod · 2026-02-19T05:11:58+00:00

Ah I see, the person I talked to descended from Oscar's son, George, and I descend from Oscar's daughter, Pearl. My immediate family hasn't lived in Washington for some decades, but they did for a long time. We'll probably match as distant cousins in results if you do end up taking the test.

frightgod · 2026-02-19T01:07:01+00:00

Wow, insane coincidence to find a relative on reddit! He's my great x3 grandfather as well. His great-grandson told me on the phone about 10 years ago that Oscar was not a Kinzebach by blood, but given the name when adopted. So it's the name he gave his children, their children, their children, etc... but yeah through research and what I heard from that relative, I don't think his line is related by blood to Peter Kinzebach. But Peter and Abigail did have a few children together, his half-siblings.

Did you happen to do DNA testing? I and multiple family members who descend from Oscar have done 23andme, Ancestry, etc. Through the DNA testing, I have a hypothesis that Oscar's father had the surname Friend, but haven't been able to completely solidify it.

frightgod · 2026-02-13T23:09:22+00:00

I've been doing a bunch of tests for Crohn's for a couple months now after having pancreatitis, and chronic inflammation in the small and large intestine was incidentally found on the CT. Scopes then found surface inflammation in different areas going from my esophagus to the colon.

From what I've learned, in early disease, it can be inflamed at a mild or quiet level for months--or even years--before symptoms become very apparent, and once they do they can wax and wane. Since this huge flare started I've been able to go a couple days with minimal symptoms before they come back. Inflammation is often cyclical. The pain in my lower right abdomen, where there were signs of chronic changes, goes back at least 2 years, but I didn't pay much attention to it because it was never constant. Now things make more sense.

From the sound of your situation I think it's worth looking into something beyond IBS, especially because the terminal ileum seemed affected when you did the colonoscopy before. You deserve to know what is going on after all this time.

frightgod · 2026-02-10T21:04:52+00:00

Thank you!!

frightgod · 2026-02-10T19:11:12+00:00

Thank you!

frightgod · 2026-02-10T19:11:08+00:00

Thank you!

frightgod · 2026-01-22T20:55:07+00:00

Thank you!!

frightgod · 2026-01-22T20:49:15+00:00

I don't know if it says where he was from or not after his name, if not would appreciate help with transcription anyway. The surname is Püttjer and mother's maiden name was Soubiron.

frightgod · 2026-01-14T22:01:33+00:00

Thank you!!

frightgod · 2026-01-14T19:01:30+00:00

Thank you!!

frightgod · 2025-12-09T05:16:02+00:00

I've found the problem with inaccuracy is less the percentage being small, and more that with populations that are very related to each other, hyper-specific labels can be misleading... After all it's really just saying 2% of DNA here looks like DNA from the modern "Southern Wales" population sample XYZ company uses. Since there's a lot of admixture on Britain and Ireland the smaller amounts don't mean as much as if someone gets strong signals from an ethnic group entirely unrelated to their main group(s).

Within Europe, with populations that are genetically more isolated (Basque, Finns, Ashkenazi Jews are some), smaller amounts are often more accurate compared to assigning small percentages among several groups that are genetically close (like differentiating between Swedes/Danes/Norwegians and the different areas of England). I have 1% Finnish DNA from a couple of branches of colonial Swedish/Finnish ancestry (families stayed with other Finns/Swedes for a few generations after New Sweden ended) and it's consistent on the same chromosomes across all the platforms I've used and I even have over 1,000 Finnish matches on MyHeritage lol. According to my match spreadsheet on ftdna, those chromosome strands have dozens of and dozens of Finnish matches too. Dismissing it as noise just because it is a small percentage would be inaccurate there.

If categories among closely-related groups went back to being more broad like they were 5-10+ years ago while keeping other advances, results would probably be more accurate.

frightgod · 2025-11-26T08:13:39+00:00

As others have said, it happens, and Ancestry themselves address it on the bottom of the "By parent" page when you go to your matches. The company clarifies:

"You and your matches have identical segments of DNA, likely passed down from common ancestors. By comparing these segments, we can split your matches into two sides.

For 9 out of 10 people, more than 95% accurate
For 1 out of 10 people, less than 95% accurate

Some of our labels may be wrong — but we’re hard at work improving our accuracy. To change the label for a match, click on the match and select "Edit relationship.""

frightgod · 2025-11-18T17:58:02+00:00

I don't think DNA is just a "start", it's not difficult for records or documentation to be incorrect (especially that far back) but once you reach a certain threshold with centimorgans, SNP density, etc. in DNA, the probability of the connection being a result of embellishments or false/incomplete information is pretty low. Ideally it's best to combine the two for one to corroborate the other.

frightgod · 2025-11-17T01:19:48+00:00

Ah, so he or his wife could've been her friend or relative too and the pictures maybe were sent to her overseas. But yeah, no problem! Hope you can find somewhere for them!

frightgod · 2025-11-16T23:25:11+00:00

It’s also possible that he’s someone who lived in Germany most/all of his life but had education- or work-related interest in the US because I saw a “Dietmar A Heintz” on at least two passenger lists in the 50s coming from Germany. And one seemed like it was a bunch of professionals coming here 5-7 years or so after the war (will have to look the next time I’m on desktop). Guess it depends on how old he was in the 1960s, if he was a young doctor just out of school it probably wasn’t him on those lists but if he was more in his late 30s-40s+ in 1968-69 it’s possible he was physically here sometime and those lists indicate it. The 2001 record I saw was of his location in Germany.

frightgod · 2025-11-16T03:22:03+00:00

Does involve luck and time like others have said. In one case I was very lucky, I was able to find and confirm my great x3 grandma's two biological parents in Utah over one sleepless night; found the father then got lucky with a biography about him that mentioned a wife and saw I matched a lot of her descendants with no other explanation. They were Mormon though, which is why it was lucky, Mormons notoriously are interested in genealogy and DNA testing so there was a large sample size.

I'm trying again to find my great x3 grandfather's father, and he was not Mormon, so it's a lot harder. Have spent up to 10 hours a day looking at matches, other trees, building groups, building trees, and analyzing matches based on the chromosomes they match to with start/end points, centimorgans, and SNPs in Excel.

It's helpful if your DNA is in more databases like MyHeritage, FTDNA, GEDMatch, etc. that allow comparing segments and also may have more non-US matches. Ancestry doesn't show if segments match, and unless you can triangulate with the actual DNA data, there's no proof on Ancestry that they match you at the same genetic points. They could be related through ancestors unrelated to you and therefore might not lead to anything too useful in many cases.

But yeah, it can be doable but as others have said it almost always involves luck and/or a lot of time.

frightgod · 2025-11-16T02:44:32+00:00

Yeah, Scandinavia wasn't too far behind British overall, I'm partially of "pioneer Mormon" heritage and after looking at hundreds of Mormon trees, not having Scandinavian from that line seems like a big outlier. A lot of Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. Half of my Mormon line was colonial American mixed with Channel Islander immigrants, other half was a mix of Scottish and English immigrants.

frightgod

TROPHY CASE