A few days ago, I went to have coffee with an old friend. Sitting in her kitchen, I see this beautiful photo that I can't take my eyes off of. I picked it up and said who is this? I love this picture.
It was Jeff's father, Gary, as a young boy in the 1950's. Unfortunately, Jeff's father had passed a few years ago. She went on to tell me how Jeff took an Ancestry DNA test. He wanted to find out his ethnicity and maybe find out who his father's biological parents were as Dad was adopted. It was hard to contain my excitement. I live for this kind of genealogy mystery. She then gave me access to Jeff's DNA matches. We built a tree with his parents and connected the tree to his DNA settings. Jeff's mom also took a test and this helped tremendously to sort Jeff's maternal and paternal matches. Once the tree was connected, the matches indicated which was his mother's side (thanks mom that saved so much time).
Then started looking at his matches and started building out a tree for just matches to see if I could find the commonality and connect them to one family tree. I knew I needed to connect 3 or more matches to make my theory work. I had to go in blind because I didn't know if I was working on the grandmother or grandfather's line. This one fell into place quickly for his paternal side.
His closest paternal match was DS. They matched at 1,003 cM's. Ancestry automatically assumes the first relationship from their list of possible relationships and it was labeled as first cousins. I looked at DS's tree and noticed the grandparents were Joseph Sperber and Anna Josepher. These two surnames came up with several of their shared matches. So I went on to research Joseph & Anna. They had both been married before they married each other. Each had children from their first marriages, Joe had 2 living children and Anna had 1. They were married in 1920 and went on to have 6 children together. This is the list of relationships that ancestry shows it could be between Jeff and DS:
The next match was K9 who matched at 558 cMs. This person had an unattached tree with little info. After a little digging, I determined that he was also a grandchild of both Joseph & Anna. This is DS's first cousin. This confirms that Jeff is somehow connected to Joseph & Anna.
AW matched at 105. She is a descendant from Anna's first marriage. Their only common ancestor is Anna Josepher.
The last match I looked at was LG. They match at 153 cMs. She had Josepher in her tree, but no Sperber.... This is a descendant of Anna's brother Louis. The common ancestors would be her great grandparents (Anna's parents), Joseph Josepher & Clara Felder.
After the tree was built out and I was able to connect these 4 matches, it was time to determine where Jeff fit into this tree. All the relationships needed to align with an Autosomal Statistic Chart. This is the one I like to use.
When I plug all these connections into the tree, it all falls into place. I keep going back to the match with DS. That is high for a first cousin match because this only ties into one of his father's parents. The relationship is higher than first cousin. With that in mind, I proceeded with considering her a 1/2 aunt and not a first cousin. When I did this, the 3 other matches fell quickly into place on the green chart. Also keep in mind that Jeff's father would match these people in a group higher than Jeff (a relationship closer than Jeff's). Here is a breakdown of the groups they fall into and the relationship they share with each Jeff and his dad.
Here is another chart to help figure relationships.
This is how I come to the conclusion that Gary is a half sibling to DS who share the same father, Milton Sperber. Milton Sperber is therefor Jeff's biological grandfather.
For the rest of Jeff's story: Jeff Side B - Unveiling a Paternal Grandmother
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