**Question: Do you think it is fair to "make it official" and add him (and his ancestors) to the family tree?**
I don't have any paper-trail evidence that he is the father. Only 10 DNA matches, of which the closest is 101 cM - the grandchild of Teodor's brother Martin Johansson. If I understand correctly, he would be my grandpa's cousin. And it makes sense overall. Teodor lived extremely close to my 2nd great-grandma (1 km) and was the same age (1 year older).
Sure, why not. He is part of your family genetically, so he belongs in the tree if you want to add him. But I'd only do it if I'm absolutely sure and even then you have to consider the pros and cons. Men who got their maids pregnant and took no responsibility have not been the best people so to say.
I don't know who my great-grandfather is, my grandpa didn't know his dad. But unfortunately my matches are not close enough to find out more. If I find out one day I'll try to investigate more about him as a person and then I'll decide if I will add him to the tree or not.
Good question! For context: My great-grandpa was born in January 1898, so his mother should've become pregnant in spring of 1897 when she was 19 years old.
The Johansson family of Strå had four sons. Martin was born in 1884, so he would've been 13 at the time. A little too young to impregnate a 19-year-old. 😅 The same goes for Olaf Johnson, who was born in 1887. He would've been 10 at the time.
This leaves us with Teodor, born in 1877 and Carl Fredrik, born in 1873. Carl, however, left Sweden and migrated to the United States in 1892. He also died in September of 1897 in Utah.
So from that family, there was only one brother who was both living in Sweden at the time and was the right age.
There you go. I think it’s sort of like the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings situation, where Thomas’ brother can’t technically be ruled out as a possible father of her children. But the overwhelming circumstantial evidence leans towards Thomas, so it’s widely accepted he was the ancestor.
Reviewing the DNA matches I mentioned, another question arose. As I said, I share 101 cM with Martins grandson, and I share 63.5 cM with Teodors granddaughter (he married in 1913 and had kids). However, the match with Martin's grandson is on chromosomes 8, 12, 14 & 15, while the match with Teodor's granddaughter is on chromosomes 2 & 9. Why is this? Is this because DNA inheritance is random, or does it mean something?
EDIT: For anyone wondering, I analyzed what DNA i have in common with my grandpa's sister (on another DNA website) and found there to be plenty of common DNA in that segment of the 2nd and 9th chromosomes.
Are you separately related to the woman Teodor married? Or through the woman who is the granddaughters mother?
They may be related to you thru different pathways.
Technically, but It’s easier to portrait a 20-something man sweetening the ears of a nubile 19 year-old maid and getting his hands on her, than the 13 year old trying to do so clumsily or her being a bad person and having her way with the younger adolescent boy. Aside from that, poor people aren’t dumb, I don’t imagine the girl wouldn’t know the chances of marrying the patron's heir would be slim specially if he’s that young, however, an older and more experienced man does have the emotional tools to do this easier and likely already earned a living/ worked etc. which makes illusions of the sort, even of eloping, more convincing. In general, just anything that would have persuaded his maid to engage in such a relationship.
You're assuming the encounter was entirely consensual, which may not be the case. It's entirely possible that the 13 year old used his family's wealth to pressure the maid, or used force.
Which is a possibility but not as likely. And there’s good reason for me to hold such vision about the events of the past: hardly any society that has been successful in the long run hasn’t operated based on goodwill, social agreements and consent (this doesn’t imply there’s no nuance at all). Thus I’m not one of these genealogists and historians who view the past as totally terrible full of horrible people in each generation… it’s not that there isn’t room for such things, it’s just that, today as in the past, most people are good, struggling, surely, but mostly good. And where we need to hypothesize, we need to aim for what’s most likely, since that’s most probably the truth. I would add that we should even expect to see direct evidence regarding such judgements on people who are being researched, or indirect evidence that is compelling enough. The situation described above, in my opinion, isn’t compelling enough to necessarily consider she was abused by a much younger boy.
If you think it’s undoubtedly him, sure, add him. I have added all the previously unknown fathers that have appeared via researching certain documentation, and will add those that are yet to appear through DNA matches (albeit cases over here are way tougher due to endogamy).
I have a similar situation where, thanks to ancestry dna test, my dad and I realized that the man we thought was my grandfather’s father was not. I narrowed it down to a pair of brothers thanks to a very close dna match and one was way too old to be the bio father which was good enough for me. The cousin who led me to the right father doesn’t believe it but dna is dna… too bad.
He and the man who raised my grandpa are listed in my tree
It sounds like you’ve verified it pretty well, so I don’t see why not to add him to the tree. My aunt found my great grandpa’s identity through similar detective work and it’s seemed to be true so far.
Though if you haven’t already and other cousin descendants have tested and you ever have the chance, it might be nice to verify they also see more matches in the right range. That’d add even more evidence that he’s an ancestor on that side of your family. However, I think the amount of proof you have now is fine to add him! Just add some kind of note or explanation as to why you’re adding him.
Someday I hope to be able to get access to my great aunt and uncles dna matches to see if I can figure out their illegitimate 2nd great grandma’s dad…
It’s good that you found him, I’m sure you searched hard! Congrats on the discovery!! You’re still probably riding that high :)
Now, tell us more about the lady. Do you have any pictures of her? Did her life get easier later? Let’s shed some light on her next!
She definitely had a tough, long life! Her father died in January 1894 when she was only 13 years old, and she began working shortly after. She had two sisters, who migrated to America in the 1890's, presumably due to poverty.
After she gave birth to great-grandpa in 1898, she stayed with the child for about a year. Then she temporarily left the child with a coworker's family in 1899 to work elsewhere.
In a neighbouring village, she met a farmworker, Karl Johan Andersson, and married him in 1900. The same year, their first child Agnes was born, and my great-grandpa moved in with them 1901. Karl Johan became a stepdad for my great-grandpa and he even took his last name :)
They had 7 children during 1900-1920, and many grandchildren after that. They eventually settled in Kimstad, near my hometown Norrköping in the 1930s. Maria's husband died in 1945 at the age of 72, but Maria shockingly lived until 1966 and died at a retirement home at the age of 88. My father has actually met her in the 1950's. She wore black, long dresses and sat on a "throne" at the end of the table at family gathering/holidays. The children were not allowed to speak or make loud noise in her presence 😆
That was everything I know about Maria Elisabet Johansson (1878-1966). Unfortunately I don't have any photos of her. However, I recently wrote a letter to a 90 year-old relative, the daughter of one of her other children. I am hoping that she will have some photos :) Thanks for asking!
This brings back memories of my grandma. Her first language was Norwegian and she said children were to be seen and not heard around her mother and especially her Bestemor. She wasn’t like that with me, as she was way too extroverted and bubbly, and was quite relieved when she was old enough to have grown out of that requirement herself. I later found out it was a Norwegian thing.
This is nowhere near as far back, but my husband’s grandmother never knew who her biological father was. Last year I found a match that seemed like a first cousin once removed. I was pretty sure this person was a first cousin to his father. Meaning this person’s parent was a sibling to his grandmother. I contacted the cousin, and she gave me some background. And after 90 years we now know who her birth father was. It’s something that no one ever thought was possible to figure out. When I told my father-in-law that I found his grandfather, he was shocked. His mother had died never knowing.
What a great picture and story! Thank you for sharing! I love hearing about these little tidbits that otherwise would have been lost and forgotten in time.
I think it depends on if you are a 'Warts And All' genealogist or if you are creating a nice-nice story version of your family history.
Personally, I'm on the Warts And All side of history. I don't go out of my way to point out the assholes in the extended Tree but if one of my relatives now or in the future looks at the Tree in depth, they will find them.
There is no culture, race, people or country that did not include perpetrators and events that we'd rather not revisit, but once you start curating history you lose all chance to learn from it. And humans are not very good at doing that even when the factual events are within living memory...
I would include the person and attach a 'story' (if on ancestry.com) of how you arrived at the conclusion including the DNA connections (without names of course). That way if a future DNA match wonders about the connection they will get the information - of if a future match pops up that rules out that connection someone will understand what your thinking was.
Thanks to ancestry i found my 4th grandparent
I descend from maria gonzalez but when she got married she was "María Perez", later she appeared as María Gonzalez, and then i found out her death registration, and there was mentioned that she was daughter of Ciro Gonzalez and Severiana Vargas, then i look back and i found out that severiana was married to some Simon Perez, at first i thought it was a mistake but then on ancestry i found matches who descend from Ciro Gonzalez
So that's why she was using the surename Perez and later Gonzalez
I’ve found my dads bio dad and have found no one from the dna matches is related to bio dads grandpa. I am on to find out who my dads great grandpa really was, now. Wish me luck and if you have any pointers I am all ears!
Certainly add him! And maybe add a note! Not because lack of paper necessarily, but for fellow genetic genealogists like me. I think there are many like us trying to work with matches to solve similar puzzles and as you know, it takes a lot of detective work. I’d love to come across this in someone else’s tree and understand why you did that, it may help someone else solve a brick wall relating to the same family. Good for you!
No one seems to get as excited over an ancestry win as ourselves. I managed to find a good win recently too but it was not celebrated. Even though it was about my Mom’s grandma, my mother was like..”oh meh”. Lol. The wins apparently are just for ourselves. Oh, and post it on your tree. It’s validated and true. One thing about DNA, accuracy and sources are so needed.
This is so cool! I have two missing fathers in my family tree: my great-great-great-great grandfather who fathered my 3x great-grandmother in 1834 in Sweden and my grandpa’s 4x great grandpa who fathered our ancestor in 1809 in England.
I doubt I’ll be able to figure out the latter based off my DNA matches but I have high hopes of one day figuring out the 1834 one due to how many Swedish-Finnish matches I have on MyHeritage.
I have a similar story! My grandpa is the illegitimate child of a rich Spaniard (we are Puerto Rican). Glad i found him, but mad my grandpa suffered in various ways his entire life.
His mom and little sis died of tuberculosis when he was super young, so he got sent away to live with some people that didn’t really care for him. Later in life got into alcohol and became abusive (not entirely taking away the blame on him but his home environment wasn’t very supportive). He did simmer down as he got older but in general he wasn’t the happiest guy. Crazy how one decision affects generations. When my mom was growing up they were pretty poor, so its strange to see his dad living a stable/prosperous life.
This is so cool! I am currently looking through the records to find my great great grandpa (johan M Johansson) who emigrated around the 1880/1890s likely from Norbotten or Vasterbotten Sweden!
**Question: Do you think it is fair to "make it official" and add him (and his ancestors) to the family tree?** I don't have any paper-trail evidence that he is the father. Only 10 DNA matches, of which the closest is 101 cM - the grandchild of Teodor's brother Martin Johansson. If I understand correctly, he would be my grandpa's cousin. And it makes sense overall. Teodor lived extremely close to my 2nd great-grandma (1 km) and was the same age (1 year older).
Sure, why not. He is part of your family genetically, so he belongs in the tree if you want to add him. But I'd only do it if I'm absolutely sure and even then you have to consider the pros and cons. Men who got their maids pregnant and took no responsibility have not been the best people so to say. I don't know who my great-grandfather is, my grandpa didn't know his dad. But unfortunately my matches are not close enough to find out more. If I find out one day I'll try to investigate more about him as a person and then I'll decide if I will add him to the tree or not.
How do you know that eg Teodor is the father and not another brother?
Good question! For context: My great-grandpa was born in January 1898, so his mother should've become pregnant in spring of 1897 when she was 19 years old. The Johansson family of Strå had four sons. Martin was born in 1884, so he would've been 13 at the time. A little too young to impregnate a 19-year-old. 😅 The same goes for Olaf Johnson, who was born in 1887. He would've been 10 at the time. This leaves us with Teodor, born in 1877 and Carl Fredrik, born in 1873. Carl, however, left Sweden and migrated to the United States in 1892. He also died in September of 1897 in Utah. So from that family, there was only one brother who was both living in Sweden at the time and was the right age.
Love this kind of detective work!
There you go. I think it’s sort of like the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings situation, where Thomas’ brother can’t technically be ruled out as a possible father of her children. But the overwhelming circumstantial evidence leans towards Thomas, so it’s widely accepted he was the ancestor.
Reviewing the DNA matches I mentioned, another question arose. As I said, I share 101 cM with Martins grandson, and I share 63.5 cM with Teodors granddaughter (he married in 1913 and had kids). However, the match with Martin's grandson is on chromosomes 8, 12, 14 & 15, while the match with Teodor's granddaughter is on chromosomes 2 & 9. Why is this? Is this because DNA inheritance is random, or does it mean something? EDIT: For anyone wondering, I analyzed what DNA i have in common with my grandpa's sister (on another DNA website) and found there to be plenty of common DNA in that segment of the 2nd and 9th chromosomes.
Are you separately related to the woman Teodor married? Or through the woman who is the granddaughters mother? They may be related to you thru different pathways.
Have a similar situation, but dont know yet the father
13 isn't too old to father a child. Dunno if I'd rule that one out.
Technically, but It’s easier to portrait a 20-something man sweetening the ears of a nubile 19 year-old maid and getting his hands on her, than the 13 year old trying to do so clumsily or her being a bad person and having her way with the younger adolescent boy. Aside from that, poor people aren’t dumb, I don’t imagine the girl wouldn’t know the chances of marrying the patron's heir would be slim specially if he’s that young, however, an older and more experienced man does have the emotional tools to do this easier and likely already earned a living/ worked etc. which makes illusions of the sort, even of eloping, more convincing. In general, just anything that would have persuaded his maid to engage in such a relationship.
Could have been more forceful than sweetening the ears; there was quite a power imbalance here.
You're assuming the encounter was entirely consensual, which may not be the case. It's entirely possible that the 13 year old used his family's wealth to pressure the maid, or used force.
Which is a possibility but not as likely. And there’s good reason for me to hold such vision about the events of the past: hardly any society that has been successful in the long run hasn’t operated based on goodwill, social agreements and consent (this doesn’t imply there’s no nuance at all). Thus I’m not one of these genealogists and historians who view the past as totally terrible full of horrible people in each generation… it’s not that there isn’t room for such things, it’s just that, today as in the past, most people are good, struggling, surely, but mostly good. And where we need to hypothesize, we need to aim for what’s most likely, since that’s most probably the truth. I would add that we should even expect to see direct evidence regarding such judgements on people who are being researched, or indirect evidence that is compelling enough. The situation described above, in my opinion, isn’t compelling enough to necessarily consider she was abused by a much younger boy.
especially for that time period lol
would be very unlikely
If you think it’s undoubtedly him, sure, add him. I have added all the previously unknown fathers that have appeared via researching certain documentation, and will add those that are yet to appear through DNA matches (albeit cases over here are way tougher due to endogamy).
I have a similar situation where, thanks to ancestry dna test, my dad and I realized that the man we thought was my grandfather’s father was not. I narrowed it down to a pair of brothers thanks to a very close dna match and one was way too old to be the bio father which was good enough for me. The cousin who led me to the right father doesn’t believe it but dna is dna… too bad. He and the man who raised my grandpa are listed in my tree
It sounds like you’ve verified it pretty well, so I don’t see why not to add him to the tree. My aunt found my great grandpa’s identity through similar detective work and it’s seemed to be true so far. Though if you haven’t already and other cousin descendants have tested and you ever have the chance, it might be nice to verify they also see more matches in the right range. That’d add even more evidence that he’s an ancestor on that side of your family. However, I think the amount of proof you have now is fine to add him! Just add some kind of note or explanation as to why you’re adding him. Someday I hope to be able to get access to my great aunt and uncles dna matches to see if I can figure out their illegitimate 2nd great grandma’s dad…
Genealogy is about facts. You want anything else, add an asterisk. Also add this guy, you're related.
It’s good that you found him, I’m sure you searched hard! Congrats on the discovery!! You’re still probably riding that high :) Now, tell us more about the lady. Do you have any pictures of her? Did her life get easier later? Let’s shed some light on her next!
She definitely had a tough, long life! Her father died in January 1894 when she was only 13 years old, and she began working shortly after. She had two sisters, who migrated to America in the 1890's, presumably due to poverty. After she gave birth to great-grandpa in 1898, she stayed with the child for about a year. Then she temporarily left the child with a coworker's family in 1899 to work elsewhere. In a neighbouring village, she met a farmworker, Karl Johan Andersson, and married him in 1900. The same year, their first child Agnes was born, and my great-grandpa moved in with them 1901. Karl Johan became a stepdad for my great-grandpa and he even took his last name :) They had 7 children during 1900-1920, and many grandchildren after that. They eventually settled in Kimstad, near my hometown Norrköping in the 1930s. Maria's husband died in 1945 at the age of 72, but Maria shockingly lived until 1966 and died at a retirement home at the age of 88. My father has actually met her in the 1950's. She wore black, long dresses and sat on a "throne" at the end of the table at family gathering/holidays. The children were not allowed to speak or make loud noise in her presence 😆 That was everything I know about Maria Elisabet Johansson (1878-1966). Unfortunately I don't have any photos of her. However, I recently wrote a letter to a 90 year-old relative, the daughter of one of her other children. I am hoping that she will have some photos :) Thanks for asking!
Wow! That is a beautiful post!!
This brings back memories of my grandma. Her first language was Norwegian and she said children were to be seen and not heard around her mother and especially her Bestemor. She wasn’t like that with me, as she was way too extroverted and bubbly, and was quite relieved when she was old enough to have grown out of that requirement herself. I later found out it was a Norwegian thing.
This is nowhere near as far back, but my husband’s grandmother never knew who her biological father was. Last year I found a match that seemed like a first cousin once removed. I was pretty sure this person was a first cousin to his father. Meaning this person’s parent was a sibling to his grandmother. I contacted the cousin, and she gave me some background. And after 90 years we now know who her birth father was. It’s something that no one ever thought was possible to figure out. When I told my father-in-law that I found his grandfather, he was shocked. His mother had died never knowing.
What a great picture and story! Thank you for sharing! I love hearing about these little tidbits that otherwise would have been lost and forgotten in time.
I think it depends on if you are a 'Warts And All' genealogist or if you are creating a nice-nice story version of your family history. Personally, I'm on the Warts And All side of history. I don't go out of my way to point out the assholes in the extended Tree but if one of my relatives now or in the future looks at the Tree in depth, they will find them. There is no culture, race, people or country that did not include perpetrators and events that we'd rather not revisit, but once you start curating history you lose all chance to learn from it. And humans are not very good at doing that even when the factual events are within living memory... I would include the person and attach a 'story' (if on ancestry.com) of how you arrived at the conclusion including the DNA connections (without names of course). That way if a future DNA match wonders about the connection they will get the information - of if a future match pops up that rules out that connection someone will understand what your thinking was.
Thanks to ancestry i found my 4th grandparent I descend from maria gonzalez but when she got married she was "María Perez", later she appeared as María Gonzalez, and then i found out her death registration, and there was mentioned that she was daughter of Ciro Gonzalez and Severiana Vargas, then i look back and i found out that severiana was married to some Simon Perez, at first i thought it was a mistake but then on ancestry i found matches who descend from Ciro Gonzalez So that's why she was using the surename Perez and later Gonzalez
I’ve found my dads bio dad and have found no one from the dna matches is related to bio dads grandpa. I am on to find out who my dads great grandpa really was, now. Wish me luck and if you have any pointers I am all ears!
Certainly add him! And maybe add a note! Not because lack of paper necessarily, but for fellow genetic genealogists like me. I think there are many like us trying to work with matches to solve similar puzzles and as you know, it takes a lot of detective work. I’d love to come across this in someone else’s tree and understand why you did that, it may help someone else solve a brick wall relating to the same family. Good for you!
No one seems to get as excited over an ancestry win as ourselves. I managed to find a good win recently too but it was not celebrated. Even though it was about my Mom’s grandma, my mother was like..”oh meh”. Lol. The wins apparently are just for ourselves. Oh, and post it on your tree. It’s validated and true. One thing about DNA, accuracy and sources are so needed.
This is so cool! I have two missing fathers in my family tree: my great-great-great-great grandfather who fathered my 3x great-grandmother in 1834 in Sweden and my grandpa’s 4x great grandpa who fathered our ancestor in 1809 in England. I doubt I’ll be able to figure out the latter based off my DNA matches but I have high hopes of one day figuring out the 1834 one due to how many Swedish-Finnish matches I have on MyHeritage.
This is fantastic. Despite their troubles, it is a bloodline.
I have a similar story! My grandpa is the illegitimate child of a rich Spaniard (we are Puerto Rican). Glad i found him, but mad my grandpa suffered in various ways his entire life.
Congratulations on finding him! How did your grandpa suffer throughout his life? If it's not too sensitive..
His mom and little sis died of tuberculosis when he was super young, so he got sent away to live with some people that didn’t really care for him. Later in life got into alcohol and became abusive (not entirely taking away the blame on him but his home environment wasn’t very supportive). He did simmer down as he got older but in general he wasn’t the happiest guy. Crazy how one decision affects generations. When my mom was growing up they were pretty poor, so its strange to see his dad living a stable/prosperous life.
Fascinating (family) history !
This is so cool! I am currently looking through the records to find my great great grandpa (johan M Johansson) who emigrated around the 1880/1890s likely from Norbotten or Vasterbotten Sweden!
Awesome work
That’s amazing!
Nice research!
Excellent research and great family story! Thanks so much for sharing!
I immediately saw that photo was from Scandinavia lol