The DNA test results for my "honorary cousin" in Poland came in today and, sadly, he did not turn up on the match list for me or for my father.
There are two other women on ancestry.com who have ancestors with the same last name from the same general area as my family. Those two women are distant DNA cousins to each other; but, they did not match with me.
"Honorary cousin" in Poland has known family from both of the two exact towns where these ladies' ancestors came from. I was certain that, if he didn't match to me, he would match to one or the both of them. If so, then I could put them all in touch with each other and they could "meet" each other.
Unfortunately, neither one of the two women came up as a match for him either! So, either we have a lot of unrelated people with our uncommon last name running around or the DNA test isn't able to go far enough back to pick-up the connection.
I do understand the complexities of DNA and how these things can get muddied up based on the various combinations and scenarios. Though, I was a bit surprised that the other two women didn't match either. I don't know about the two ladies; but, me and "honorary cousin" did both separately come up as having DNA from the same specific region in Poland.
Oh well...we'll keep plugging away at the family tree the old fashioned way!
Quote:
Originally Posted by honeychile
Another is the back story of Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak. She was born Megan Smolenyak, and then met and married a man with the last name of Smolenyak. She was able to trace their lineage to a small town in Slovakia, and there were four distinct Smolenyak families. Through DNA, they were able to isolate one of the families from the other three, and so it happened that she & her husband were not even remotely blood related.
Navane & 1964, I immediately thought of Megan when I read your posts. So often, the very "tribe" to which we think we belong is not indeed ours. I know that, at best, I'm only half-related to all but seven people with my maiden name. |
This may very well be a similar situation here. One village has a current population of 650 and the other 13,060. So, kinda small...but, yeah, maybe they are unrelated, but decided to use the same last names.