When DNA Fills in What Records Don't Show: Solving Dead Ends Through DNA Matches
This post is the first of a two-part series on how DNA matches pieced together longstanding unanswered dead ends in my family tree. While many use commercial DNA tests as a kitschy way to see one's ancestral heritage, for a genealogist, reviewing other DNA matches' trees may result in major breakthroughs in understanding one's own family tree. Here is a case study highlighting this result in Ukrainian records from the former Russian Empire. The next post will cover records from the historical region of Galicia in the former Austrian Empire. Grandma Tillie My great-great-grandmother was named Tillie Levine. When I started my research many years ago, all that was known in the family was that she died in New York in the 1950s and that she was in her 80s or 90s. After digging into the research, I acquired a copy of her 1956 death certificate from the New York City Department of Health and viewed her grave. Both gave me the detail that her father's name was Jacob. I also lea