I’ve been using DNA to try to narrow down the options for Karl Adolf’s unknown father, my mysterious great grandfather. I naively assumed that last names I didn’t recognize would jump out at me on the long list of matches, and that I pretty quickly would have some sense of where to look further. That has not happened.
I have a lot of semi-strong matches in Sweden, in the other Nordic countries, and in the US. From what I know about my family I expected that. But there are also strong matches in Finland I can’t explain. There are random strong matches in Poland, Great Britain, and Ireland. I’m guessing the fact that Karl Adolf himself, and my father’s maternal grandfather and his sons, were away at sea for years at a time might explain some of these unexpected relatives.
Because of Swedish naming traditions, if you go back 150 years pretty much everyone was called Andersson, Andersdotter, or Svensson. Family names weren’t commonly used until the end of the 1800s. Before then if your father was Anders Johansson, you became an Andersson or Andersdotter, not a Johansson or a Johansdotter. This makes it almost impossible to make assumptions about family relationships without studying a family tree further. You have to look at places of origin, and the names of other relatives. It’s time consuming, and difficult.
I haven’t found much. But, I have a match with woman in Washington state where I strongly suspect the link is the mysterious mr. Abrahamsson. For a fact she is related to a Johan Adolf Abrahamsson from Göteborg. And for a fact she and I are related. It remains to be seen if he is really the link, or if she and I are related some other way. I’ll need more matches, and cross referencing.
I do know, now, through DNA, that I have relatives buried in the cemetery in the small California town where I’ve lived for the past 20 years. Relatives of relatives who came to this part of California in the 1930s, made money on orchards, and built a house in San Jose that is still standing.