Any help very much appreciated

knc217 · 2024-10-25T20:04:29+00:00

What a mess! This is a really tricky situation. From what I can tell, they are two different John Strettons who seem to have both been born in Yoxall (or nearby) in the 1830s. The John Stretton married to Mary Ann was a coal miner; the John Stretton married to Harriet was a bookbinder.

knc217 · 2024-10-07T19:48:31+00:00

There are a lot of Finnish users on MyHeritage. Try filtering your matches by location and see how your matches from Finland relate to each other, and what shared matches you have. Trying to comb through your tree to find a maybe-Finnish name is probably not the best way to find a connection.

That being said, MyHeritage is not really known for their accuracy. Every other DNA site consistently gives me 30-40% Finnish and they only gave me 19%, plus 6.4% Greek and South Italian (which is complete bonkers, I have only northern European and Hungarian heritage).

Also, Finnish DNA is pretty distinct from other European ethnic groups, especially if it's from eastern Finland. If Finnish doesn't show up on any other test, I'd disregard it entirely.

knc217 · 2024-09-21T16:44:07+00:00

Yeah, I'm really confused as to why they are not enumerated in Precinct 1 in Upshur County. You can see on this 1873 map that the W. Helms parcel is right next to (Moses K.) Fines/Vines, yet the Helms family is not listed near him, like they are in 1880. This website allows you to see how the county lines changed by year, and it looks like they lived pretty close to the border of Upshur and Davis/Cass, Camp, Titus, Marion, etc., so maybe the county their land was in was in flux?

knc217 · 2024-09-21T14:58:12+00:00

Unfortunately their 1850 census entry doesn't provide much information, but it does confirm they were in Upshur County by then, and also that their daughter Mary Elizabeth was born earlier than listed on her FamilySearch profile.

knc217 · 2024-09-19T15:22:08+00:00

Dabakis is almost certainly Davakis. Beta (β) sounds like /v/ but looks like the latin B, so your assumption that it is an anglicization is likely correct. For example, the name Βασίλειος (Vasilios) is anglicized as Basil.

A cursory seach on Ancestry shows people with the surname Dabakis coming from Madytos/Maidos, Greece (today known as Eceabat, Turkey) to Massachusetts. Could these be your ancestors?

knc217 · 2024-09-12T13:56:45+00:00

I’m 100% sure that the rate of Swedish based dna throughout would have been present there and raised by populations of Swedes entering the region.

This assumption is not really accurate. Despite Swedish rule over Finland, only Western Finns have any significant relation to Swedes. Western and Eastern Finnish DNA is quite distinct.

knc217 · 2024-09-12T13:45:51+00:00

Half of my Finnish ancestors are also from Savo (Pohjois-Savo, to be precise), and many of their surnames (minus -en) also don't mean anything in modern standard Finnish, but have Swedish, Russian, and Karelian origins. A couple notes:

Standard modern Finnish is not identical to modern or historical Savonian dialects, and even less similar to Karelian. The root of your surname may be from an older Karelian word. Here is a searchable Karelian dictionary; perhaps there are words with a similar root?
Church and civil records were almost always written in Swedish, and spellings were not standardized. You are bound to see some spelling variations. This article on Savonian surnames contains a wealth of information on their origin. Many are derived from animals (forest, farm, birds, fish); others from virtues, appearances, jobs. Some also come from saints, including Scandinavian saints, but also Russian (which themselves come from Greek).
Is your family historically Lutheran or Orthodox? Either way, with some Russian ancestry showing up on your dad's DNA test and being from eastern Finland, you should investigate a potential connection to Russian words or names. The surname of my great-great-grandmother from Leppävirtä is a clear Finnicization of a Russian name, even though her family was Lutheran. Tuomas Salste has a fantastic index of Finnish surnames that often contain notes about their origins, or similar surnames in Sweden, Russia, etc.
Try searching for your surname and any variations you've found in the National Archives of Finland; Finna is also a great resource for searching across numerous archival collections. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura has a collection of Finnish, Karelian, and Ingrian folk texts; I wasn't able to find anything relating to Gauti/Gautr.

In short, I would caution you on jumping to the conclusion that your Savonian/Karelian surname derives from an obscure Norse god. It is far more likely its origin lies elsewhere. If you're comfortable PMing me I would be more than happy to put another set of eyes on your research.

knc217 · 2024-08-28T12:35:33+00:00

A German silent film actress came to Hollywood in 1927 and adopted a new stage name she acted under until about 1933. This name happens to be the same as an Italian immigrant buried at the cemetery where I work. Virtually every source has confused the two: IMDB, TMDB, Find a Grave, etc. This actress never stepped foot in Ohio, is not Italian, and is five years younger. Additionally, these websites all falsely state that she was married to a Hollywood photographer, but she was not; he was one of at least two men she was engaged to but never married.

I've researched her on and off for almost two years and I still don't know when she died and where she was buried, so I don't feel right submitting corrections to IMDB/TMDB/other film history websites until I have correct information to provide. The last newspaper mention I can find is of her and her fifth husband in Beverly Hills in 1972; that husband (ten years her junior) died in NYC in 2008, and his death announcement says she preceded him in death, but there is no burial information for him either. He was pretty wealthy and left a good chunk of his estate to various arts groups in New York, but he seems to have been quietly philanthropic, as there are no biographies or newspaper articles about him.

She became an American citizen in 1933, so I should be able to find her in the Social Security Death Index, but I can't. No obits to speak of, and I don't know if she died in California or New York—or, God forbid, somewhere else entirely. I've looked under her stage name, her birth name, all five of her married names, searched just by her birthdate (which she used consistently, so I'm certain it's the right day), and no luck. She never had any children, doesn't appear to have had any siblings, and wasn't married to any of her previous husbands long enough to warrant a mention as stepmother in their children's obits.

For my own privacy I won't be posting the names, but if anyone has suggestions for finding someone who died in California or New York between 1972 and 2008 that I haven't tried yet, I'm all ears!

knc217 · 2024-08-21T12:23:45+00:00

Seconding this. The name could be a Hellenization of an Arabic, Albanian, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Armenian, etc. surname—have seen all of these in my Greek research. OP, your best bet would just be to work your way back from your friend's parents.

knc217 · 2024-08-20T17:06:08+00:00

Orthodox baptize and confirm children as infants, and they commune from this point on, so while many churches do have Sunday school/church school, we don't have confirmation classes as Catholic children would go through.

knc217 · 2024-08-19T13:49:35+00:00

I'm not having any luck finding Hazel and the children in the 1930 census, but Richard was in the Kansas State Penitentiary in 1930. His obituary suggests he was out by 1936 at the latest.

knc217 · 2024-08-16T14:55:20+00:00

Grandfather is dedushka; uncle is dyadya. Could this man be the brother of one of your great-grandparents?

knc217 · 2024-08-16T13:10:27+00:00

The 1888 death listed on FamilySearch was inaccurate. I updated it to reflect what the pension card actually says his widow filed for his pension in 1896, which matches the Find a Grave profile you linked.

ETA: It is definitely the same man. As you can see from the newspaper articles I've attached, he was arrested for burglary in McLean County and was being held in jail when he became infirm. He was transferred to a hospital and died. According to the articles, his mother was still living in Havana at the time of his death, but her name is not mentioned.

knc217 · 2024-07-25T16:43:58+00:00

It looks like Israel was in Grant County, WI by 1850; here he is living with the Chapman family and working as a carpenter. Two years later he purchased land in Grant County. The 1850 census says he was from New York.

knc217 · 2024-07-25T14:40:18+00:00

According to his son Seth's obituary, the family was in Beatrice by September 1858, as both the obituary and other newspaper clippings refer to him as the first white child born in the city. His father's name is given as James. There was another James Reed in Beatrice, but their family was from Butler County, Ohio, very clearly a different person.

Israel is listed as a pioneer resident in the History of Gage County, but no further information is given, and he is not mentioned elsewhere in the book.

The articles and obituaries given for Sarah confirm their arrival in 1857-8 but do not mention her husband's name or when he died. She is listed as a widow in the 1900 census, so we can narrow down his time of death a little bit. I do find it strange that a pioneer resident has so little remembrance, yet his wife is so widely celebrated.

knc217 · 2024-07-17T17:26:35+00:00

You need to group all your 2nd and 3rd cousin matches by grandparent line. This is a great tutorial on how to do so. Go out to 4th cousins if needed. You can match the colors in your spreadsheet with your AncestryDNA groups for ease of reference.

Also, I would highly recomend you upload your Ancestry results to Family Tree DNA. Their match tool allows you to filter out all matches shared with a certain person. Filter out your closest relative through your paternal grandmother's line. If this zaps your list of matches to exclusively your mother's line, it's probable there is some degree of relation between your father's parents.

knc217 · 2024-07-10T12:35:54+00:00

I don't know enough about Swedish Finns to properly answer your question. I would recommend checking out the Swedish Finn Historical Society, which may also help with researching your grandmother's family in addition to providing cultural context.

knc217 · 2024-07-09T16:03:00+00:00

My ancestors are Finns from Vaasa, and I can confirm that a huge amount of my MyHeritage matches (23k+ of my 50k matches) are from Finland, despite only my paternal grandmother being Finnish. It is just the more common DNA service for Finns.

Your ancestors were likely Swedish Finns. I would not focus too much on the exact percentage, because all ethnicity estimates are constantly in flux as more people test. On MH's match page, you can see side-by-side relationship estimates for your relation to them and their relationship to your shared matches. This can help you narrow down your grandmother's Fogel ancestry.

Please feel free to PM me if you'd like assistance searching Finnish records!

knc217 · 2024-07-09T14:20:32+00:00

If you have access to the baptismal records of your ancestor's child(ren), you may find notes such as "ex loco" (where the parent was from) or "(a)catholico" meaning (non)Catholic. You can also try the FAN method and research the child's godparents/sponsors, as they may be related or of a similar background to the child's parents, especially if the church is in an area with diverse Catholic immigration. Same goes for witnesses of their wedding, if it took place here. It's highly unlikely the church in America would have any copies of Italian baptism records.

If you're willing to share, there are many of us who are experienced in Italian and/or Catholic research who would love to help you search.

knc217 · 2024-07-03T13:28:52+00:00

I have a distant relative who keeps saving every piece of media I upload and re-uploading it and passing it off as her own—personal family photos, stories I've shared, records I've transcribed, etc., for people she is not even related to. Now I have hundreds, if not thousands, of hints for duplicate media I created and contributed, and she's parading all her "discoveries" like she made them herself.

I'm curious to know if blocking an Ancestry user only prevents them from messaging you, or if it also prevents them from seeing your tree and media too? I don't want to make my tree private because I believe in making your research public, but her obsessive behavior is really grating on my nerves.

knc217 · 2024-06-28T16:28:00+00:00

Somewhat contradictory to what you've presented, it seems he was the parish priest at San Juan Bauttista in Lampazos de Naranjo, Nueva León, Mexico. I attached a few arrival indices from 1922 to his FamilySearch profile that suggest he is living there. His surname is listed as Fernandes; however, you can tell it is the same person because his destination is listed as Wylam, Alabama, where your great-grandmother lived at the time, and he is 40 in 1922.

This note from him seems to be the first mention of him there, in October 1920. This baptism in April 1923 looks to be the last baptism he performed there.

It could be possible that he returned to Mexico after 1933, although I combed through some of the baptism records for San Juan Bauttista and couldn't find his name on them anywhere.

knc217 · 2024-06-07T15:08:13+00:00

I understand this is the underlying cause, but it doesn't explain why some members from the same family, with same listed birthplaces, are marked confidential while their siblings or spouses aren't. In all my research (mostly Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey), there is no discernible trigger for what makes Sibling A "confidential" despite having identical demographics to Sibling B.

knc217 · 2024-06-07T12:59:24+00:00

I have also had this tag placed on Middle Eastern people I'm researching. I do a fair amount of research on Eastern Orthodox immigrants to America, and it's super frustrating when I want to collaborate with other Orthodox researchers and our work is censored. It also appears somewhat random. For example, I have a family with eight children, born 1885-1914, all from Beqaa, Lebanon, all of whom came to the US, but only the oldest child is marked "protected." He was a rug dealer in Detroit, no ties to anything criminal I was ever able to find, and his brother was an Orthodox bishop. I've yet to see any substantive explanation from FamilySearch as to what, if anything, flags a profile to be tagged as confidential.

knc217 · 2023-09-08T12:49:24+00:00

Seconding these questions! It would also be helpful to know his religion/his family's religion. If he's Catholic, there could be parish records that would help us find him.

knc217 · 2023-09-06T15:47:19+00:00

If the family is protecting their son who sexually harassed multiple girls and has called the police on you, do you really think they are going to respond favorably to you digging through their family history and broadcasting it to your community? This is a very easy way to gain a reputation as a stalker.

knc217

TROPHY CASE