DNA

the one-armed bandit

by Lotta K.April 16, 2018April 16, 2018 on

This is George Victor Johnson, born in Alameda, Contra Costa Co., Calif. on Dec. 11, 1911, to Agnes Judith Hanson and Gotlin Alfred Johnson. His father was an immigrant from Norway, and his mother was from Sweden. (I don’t think ‘Gotlin’ is the original version of his father’s first name, tho.)

George was known as a one-armed robber, and the ringleader for a 1930s band of East Bay boy bandits. In 1933 he was given a sentence of 5 years to life, and sent to San Quentin. The photo is in the prison paperwork, and available online.

If I’ve done the math correctly George and my father were 3rd cousins.

A broad base

by Lotta K.March 26, 2018March 26, 2018 on

For the past 20 years I’ve had discussions with students about what it means to be American. One guy described himself as an “American mutt”, and said “I don’t have deep roots, but being a mutt gives me a broad base”.

I’ve poured over my DNA results for a few weeks. Whatever service you use, they will give you access to your own results, and to the results of your matches. I’ve looked at images of my chromosomes, and compared them to those of strangers. I’ve skimmed hundreds of family trees, the Anderssons and Larsdotters of Sweden, and the O’Malleys and O’Briens of Ireland.

There are so many people in the world, and there are bits and pieces of so many strangers in each of us. Bits of chromosomes from our families and from relatives long gone and forgotten. Parts of my DNA was already in the cemetery here in Los Gatos when I moved here in 1995. Wild, huh?

Looking at the results of my DNA analysis has made me feel more human. I too have a broad base, wider than America. We all do. We’re connected. 99% of the time we will never know how we’re connected, but that only makes it more beautiful.

From Sweden to San Francisco, to Saratoga, to a house in Willow Glen

by Lotta K.March 25, 2018March 26, 2018 on

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.

From DNA land

by Lotta K.March 19, 2018 on

Another attempt at describing my ancestry based on DNA. There is a portion of Eastern European that’s making me increasingly curious.

Eurogenes

by Lotta K.March 17, 2018March 17, 2018 on

Here it is, the breakdown of my “origins” according to gedmatch.com. Once you have your DNA data you can upload it to the service and run a range of analyses.

What this graph shows is how similar my DNA is to the DNA of people in the database who are from these regions. It’s important to realize that we don’t get our “origins” in any absolute sense. Still, I am somewhat surprised by the results. I have Eastern European, Western Mediterranean, West Asian, and American Indian similarities and I have no idea where they come from. I’m guessing the American Indian is really Sami ancestry, but beyond that, no clues.

by Lotta K.March 17, 2018March 17, 2018 on

My strongest match on Family Tree DNA is a man living in Oskarshamn, the city where my dad’s mother’s family, and my dad and his family, all lived. Ironically, tho, I think we are related through my mother’s mother’s family, some of whom came from the same area. The relationship is not particularly strong, about four generations back. So far I haven’t been able to identify the exact common ancestor.

I did the autosomal test on FTDNA. It’s the ‘family finder’ test, and it shows your shared DNA with everyone who’s been tested. I chose FTDNA because it is the most common test in Scandinavia where I have the majority of my ancestors. Recently, however, I’ve realized that I also have a lot of connections in the US. I’ve submitted a sample to Ancestry to hopefully catch some of the people who I wouldn’t be able to reach on FTDNA. Results should come back in a couple of months…