Scarlett Letters

Note: This is an expansion of a Facebook post. In an effort to get myself back on the LJ wagon, I'm taking a shortcut of sorts.

I'm a regular watcher of Finding Your Roots on PBS. After tonight's extraordinary episode (Season 3: Family Reunions), I went to the site and found a fascinating article on Jewish genetic genealogy that explains some of the baffling results from my Ancestry DNA test: namely, that thousands of potential family matches showed up. Some of this may be due to the fact that my maternal great grandfather was the father of 23 children (between two wives; yes, really). But that can't account for all those results.

It turns out that the reason for those thousands of results isn't the fact that Great Grandpa Pinchus was prolific. It's that "working with Ashkenazi Jewish autosomal DNA (atDNA) for the purpose of cousin matching has unique challenges due to the fact that the ancestors of Jews today have historically been an isolated population, typically marrying within their own group. The resulting lower degree of genetic variation means that any two people of predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are likely to share stretches of matching autosomal DNA that would usually imply recent common ancestry between them, but the genealogical relationship is most often untraceable. This is because rather than a single recent common ancestor contributing this matching atDNA, it was inherited from multiple, more distant ancestors. The contributions from these multiple shared ancestors can add up to enough shared atDNA to mimic a relatively close cousinship."

Technically speaking, this means that Jewish genetic cousin matching is very difficult indeed. Those thousands of matches I received may not actually be relatives at all. Though the Ancestry DNA test results include a lot of information about the results and the test methods, they don't explain this particular issue. Disappointing. Intuitively, the information in the quote above does make sense. And, in fact, after investigating 20 or 30, I have found almost no one who shares surnames with me, or has trees that even might touch mine. I just uncovered one surname that might be a match, but it's a fairly common name (Schwartz) in the wrong part of the European map. I'll still write them; anything is possible. It's on a branch of the family that I have very little information about that's not anecdotal. But it's one out of thousands.

The above-linked blog post explains my voluminous results. It's a little disheartening, I admit. I had hoped for some contact with other descendants of Great Grandpa Pinchus. I may yet have one more route for investigation and when I have time (that copious "spare time" of myth and legend) I want to pursue it.

It's interesting stuff, though. The article is fascinating, even if you're not Jewish, and well worth the reading.

I recently rediscovered a looseleaf book full of acid-free pages that I put together to store a treasure trove of pictures and correspondence from my father's side of the family. Last night and tonight, I've taken some time to scan and transcribe some of the correspondence therein. It's fascinating to read my paternal grandfather's letters to my grandmother before they were married. He is a devoted suitor, an entirely different man than the one I knew as a child. Most of the letters date from 1915, the year they became engaged to be married--100 years ago! I can't seem to load an image of the letter that I wanted to share (I'm getting a file size error, though it's no more specific than that), but here's the transcript. It mainly concerns the acquisition of invitations for their engagement party. (ETA: Actually, the letter isn't dated. It was in an envelope that, as it turned out, belonged to a different letter, matched by dates. This letter may concern invitations to either their engagement party or their wedding. It's unclear.)

Dear Little Girl.

I just received a telephone message from Mr. Bernstein that he will not be able to entertain me to-night on account of feeling very ill; therefore you will not have to hurry in coming over to the house to-night.

About the invitations. The kind that we ordered was not made up on account of the price. He wanted $6.00 for 100 and I couldn’t see into it. Therefore a prettier and plainer card was ordered. That is the arrangement my father made.

Sadie, I’d rather give you the other couple of dollars and have you buy a better hat or a better shirt or anything else that would be necessary for you to wear. Now I hope this will be satisfactory for you as I think it is a very good idea. They will be thrown away, the good invitations as well as the other.

My best regards to your folks and Sophie.
I remain as ever
Morris
Lots of love to my dear little girl

Now, there are any number of things about this letter that I love, but the thing I love about it the most is that this is my grandfather, a man whom I knew to be cranky and bitter and generally pretty unhappy. To see him write such a letter with obvious care and thought, and to sign it the way he did, is just amazing to me. At the same time, that second paragraph contains an interesting contradiction. My grandfather says that he couldn't see the price, but that his father made a different arrangement--so who made the decision to get less expensive cards, my grandfather or my great grandfather? (I should note that I have one of the invitations--the card is plain as can be, no adornment, but of a good, thick stock.) My great grandfather had a far worse reputation than my grandfather did, so I wonder if a choice presented as a pound-wise decision was actually someone pinching pennies. I can't be sure, but the generosity of the offer from my grandfather to my soon-to-be grandmother is very sweet.

And here's the invitation (click to embiggen):