DNA AND CANDLESTICKS THAT MATCH-PART II
PART II
…continued from last week
As I alluded to in my September 28, 2021, blog post, Ghosts of Catskills Past, there is a connection with my family and Svetlana’s introduced in last week’s blog post. My second cousin, once removed, Ron Newmark, turned out to be Svetlana’s fourth cousin once removed. She double-checked on DNA charts from her uncle, where Ron shows up as his fourth cousin.
Next, although he has a common name, I asked Svetlana about my first cousin Howard Friedman. She said there is a Howard Friedman on her findings who had his DNA tested in 2018. She saw no other defining information, but that sounded right to me.
No, You Don’t Really Have 7,900 4th Cousins: Some DNA Basics for Those With Ashkenazi Jewish Heritage by Jennifer Mendelsohn, dated May 23, 2017, questions the validity of DNA test results. Mendelsohn points out that, “…for many Jews, whose trees often only trace back two or three generations due to lack of easy access to Eastern European records and the fact that most Jews did not take surnames until roughly 1800 or so, tracing cousins at that distance can be virtually impossible.”
As Svetlana checks with her sister and I check with my known cousins, we will have much more to discuss as we research the names and dates of existence of our earliest relatives.
Before hanging up, I questioned Svetlana about how she came upon my blog post. She explained that after seeing my posting on a Facebook group, she inquisitively viewed my website. There she saw the candlesticks that I posted a blog about called Generations of Candlesticks, dated December 15, 2020. Those were candlesticks we discovered at the home of a cousin in Chatham, Massachusetts. That was on my husband’s side of the family.
A picture with our two younger children standing by the candlesticks of their great-grandmother’s sister marked the cover picture of that post. Svetlana said she cried for a week after seeing the candlesticks because they were the same ones her grandmother had, which are still in the family. While mass-produced and not worth great monetary value, the emotion of seeing the matching candlesticks overwhelmed her and apparently, got her stuck on reading my blog posts.
After following my blog posts, Svetlana spotted another question I posed on a Facebook group. This time, I inquired about my grandfather Harry Friedman and his brothers Gus and Mayer from Mozyr, Belarus. With that, she sent me a message:
"Svetlana Inkateshta: Do you know Mayer Friedman’s father’s name?"
I replied I do know the name of Mayer's father, my great-grandfather. That is as far back in the ancestry of my grandfather Harry’s family that I do know. His father’s name could be the verification we need to show that we are related.
The names of my grandfather Harry's parents and two brothers, plus the descendants of his brothers, are the only family members documented in our Friedman family tree. My grandfather and his brother Gus immigrated in the early 20th Century, but their brother Mayer never left Eastern Europe. Fortunately, his daughter Dora made it to the states in 1913.
My quest is to find our Friedman ancestry dating back to the years before my great-grandparents. For my paternal side and in one branch of my husband’s family, I was able to go back to the mid-1700s. Both of those success stories were through census records, not DNA testing.
It appears that Svetlana and her sister will be the ones to help find more Friedman connections. While there are many Friedmans listed from Mozyr and numerous records her sister has been copying of Friedmans, Svetlana told me there is only one Mayer Friedman listed in Belarus from WWI in 1915. While the DNA shows some connections, the census and other vital records will be the glue.
Stay tuned. There is sure to be more to this story of the three Friedman brothers from Mozyr.
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Seeking ancestry of three Friedman brothers
from Mozyr, Belarus
Harry, aka Hirsch/Gus, aka Gotz/Mayer