DNA solves a family mystery...sort of

Family Tree DNA looked at 37 sites on my Y-chromosome. Then they compared my DNA profile to those in a database of 60,000 men from around the world. The price of a Y-chromosome test ranges from $149 to $349, depending on the level of precision.

About six weeks after I mailed my sample, I received an e-mail directing me to a personalized Web site containing my results. I went to the site, and clicked on a tab labeled “Recent Ancestral Origins.” The screen filled with the countries of origin of the men in the Family Tree database whose genetic profiles most closely matched mine.

Lithuania. Ukraine. Austria. Galicia. Next to many of the country names was the notation, “Ashkenazi.”

I called Bennett Greenspan, founder of Family Tree DNA, and told him that I had some questions about my results. He opened up my site.

“A minimum of half your matches, if not even more, are people of Jewish ancestry,” Greenspan told me.

I’m Jewish?

Who knew?
Greenspan did a more detailed analysis that the company doesn’t normally release to customers simply because it results in a bewildering number of matches. He saw that I had a paucity of really close matches, making it hard to pinpoint exactly where Gus or his paternal line came from. But of the matches I did have, the vast majority were Jewish.

The closest to me was another poor slob who had no idea where his ancestors came from. After that, two guys whose ancestors came from Ukraine and Galicia, on the border between Poland and Ukraine. Then Hungary. Another Ukraine. A couple of Germanys.

For reasons of confidentiality, Greenspan couldn’t tell me the names of those people. But he could tell me one thing: A lot of those names were Jewish.

Crenson isn’t a Jewish name. In fact, it isn’t any kind of name at all. Once I found a Crenson in the Toronto phone book, so I called him up. His wife answered, and I told her my story. She listened patiently, and when I finished she said, “I’m sorry, but I doubt you and my husband are related. He’s Polish.”

She told me what his name had been when he emigrated to Canada. I don’t remember what it was, but I do remember that I could never hope to pronounce it.

Just a theory
According to the affidavit, Gus had a father named Otto Crenson. Perhaps he was the immigrant who had changed his name from something less pronounceable — and more Jewish.

The genetic data can’t say. But they do strongly suggest that I had a Jewish ancestor on my paternal line during the last 1,000 years — and probably a lot more recently than that.

And it makes sense that I would be descended from German Jews, Greenspan said. Because of the Holocaust, descendants of German Jews are relatively rare today. So like me, they frequently find themselves most closely matching the descendants of Jews from Eastern Europe.

Right now, it’s just a theory. But as more men have their DNA tested, the Family Tree DNA database will grow, increasing the likelihood that I will find someone who closely matches me and has a documented line back to Germany.

“A Jewish background would be a reason why my father would have been so reticent about his background,” my grandfather said, when I told him what I’d learned.

Then again, Gus may have known nothing of his ancestry. It is entirely possible that, half a century after his death, I am learning something very personal about Gus that he never knew himself.

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