(Almost) Wordless Wednesday ~ Half-Sisters and Half-Cousins

As I shared yesterday, I determined the relationship of my husband's newest DNA match and asked her if there were any photographs of ancestors that could be shared here.

Here is the tree I shared yesterday, showing the relationships:


Here are photographs of (on the left) Golda (Segal) Levitt, likely from the early 1950s and (on the right) her younger half-sister, Lena (Segal) Dlugatch in 1983:


And the next generation: on the left is the daughter of Golda, Rose (Levitt) Goldstein, in 1978. On the right are daughters of Lena, Molly and Sylvia, in 1980.


Maybe it needs a little bit of imagination, due to the age and quality of the photographs, but I think these ladies all look related.

Thank you to my husband's third cousin, H.K. and her father for sharing photographs from Lena (Segal) Dlugatch's side of the family.

Analyzing a DNA Match ~ Who is the Common Ancestor

Once I decided that I should be able to determine the common ancestor (also known as the MRCA: Most Recent Common Ancestor) of my husband and Mr. K. (see previous post: Analyzing a DNA Match), I clicked on the envelope icon next to the name of the match and sent an email. In the email I noted that she and my husband had a match in common with the surname Seigle, and I provided my husband's Segal ancestry (which can be seen at Surname Saturday ~ Segal of Ukraine and New Jersey).

H.K. initially replied to my email noting that she had relatives in Wildwood (New Jersey, where Simche Segal died) and a few days later, she emailed again, while at a family barbecue, and was able to tell me that Lena Segal was her great grandmother on her father's side. She also mentioned her grandmother's maiden name as Sylvia Dlugatch.

I then replied to H.K. the following:

Aha! This confirms a theory that I had worked on a couple of years ago. Lena Segal was the daughter of Simche Segal and his second wife, Rebecca (Blume) Katz. It appears that you and my husband are third cousins and your father and my mother-in-law are second cousins.

I find that a family tree diagram helps place distant family members' relationships.

My theory came from finding Lena (Segal) Dlugatch enumerated twice in the 1910 U.S. Census, which confused me and made me unsure if I had the right person.

Analyzing a DNA Match

Last August, an new, unknown DNA match appeared on my husband's AND my mother-in-law's FamilyTreeDNA results with enough shared DNA that I thought I should be able to figure out the relationship.

For the screenshots below, I am narrowed down the results by searching on their common surname (which I am keeping private).

My husband's results:

His mother's results:

This results page shows that they both share a good bit of DNA (shared Centimorgans and Longest Block) with Mr. K and his daughter H.K.

Mr. K and his daughter, H.K. both share a little bit more total DNA with my husband than with his mother. Note that this is endogamy at work: shared Jewish DNA. I find that looking at the longest block (largest DNA segment) is a better way to confirm a relationship; with a longest block of 38 cM or more, that will not be due to endogamy and I should be able to make a good effort at finding the relationship.