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 learned from her death certificate and other records of her children that Tillie's maiden name was Kozlov. Finally, I learned from her grave and other records that her first name had been Tema. So now I knew Tillie Levine's birth name was Tema Kozlov. It was a start.

Tillie’s death certificate from Brooklyn, 1956

Meanwhile, I had been doing extensive research on the family of Tillie's husband Harry (born Hersh Levit), from Pyatigory, in the Kiev region of the Russian Empire (now Pyatihory, Ukraine). My extensive research into the Levit family is covered in another post here.

But ultimately, after exhaustive US research, I had not learned much on Tillie from this side of the Atlantic. All I knew was that she was born ca. 1870, maybe in Pyatigory, maybe elsewhere, and that her name was Tema Kozlov, daughter of Jacob Kozlov. 

As to Tillie's father Jacob, I knew he likely went by the Yiddish nickname Yankel and died by 1901, as Tillie had a son Yankel (later called Jack) who was born in that year, and consistent with Ashkenazi naming practices, the younger Yankel would have only been named after a deceased relative. No record identified a mother's name, nor a town of birth. 

Then when I dug into the records from Pyatigory (in which I found Tillie's husband's family), there was not a Kozlov to be found. So Tillie/Tema came from elsewhere. But where?

Tillie was not a US citizen as of World War II and had to register as an alien. She put her town of birth as Kiev, which did not offer any help.

Help on the Ground?

Several years ago -- before any Ukrainian records were digitized and available online -- I hired a researcher in Ukraine to see if he could find the origins of the Kozlov family. I told him essentially what I wrote above. This, though, is a cautionary tale about hiring researchers and assuming that everything is always correct. 

The researcher told me he reviewed all books of Jews living in Tarashcha district (where Pyatigory was located) from the 1880s and only found one Kozlov family where the father was named Jacob/Yankel with an appropriate age. I was ecstatic! He sent me the following information on a family living in a small village called Luka: Yankel Motev Kozlov of Khodorov, wife Shifra, and children Khaskel, Feiga, Mendel, Yosko and Sima.

My first reaction was this is the 1880s and Tillie was born ca. 1870. Why isn't she listed? I wanted to see the name Tema but it was nowhere to be found. I asked the researcher about this, and he confirmed that it was the only potential Kozlov match and should be correct. I was still hesitant. What if the Kozlovs did not live in Tarashcha county? 

So I looked into the family members of this alleged match to see if I could find anything on them. Lo and behold, I found a ship record to the US for this Yankel's son from 1909. And the ship record contained a decisively crucial detail: his nearest relative in the old country was his father, "Jakob Kozlow," of "Leki" (close enough to the town of "Luka" -- but here was the problem: this ship record was from the year 1909. And I knew my Yankel Kozlov must have died before 1901, when our Tillie named a son Yankel, consistent with traditional Ashkenazi naming practices of not naming children after living individuals. Therefore, I was convinced the researcher was wrong, and I went back to the drawing board.

Excerpt from the ship manifest of Joseph Kozlow from 1909, identifying his still-living father Jakob, confirming this was a false lead!

Scouring for Kozlovs

In the meantime, Ukrainian records from the former Kiev gubernia were being rapidly added online thanks to the work of Alex Krakovsky (see the same other post mentioned above, here, regarding his work). For purposes of this research, a crucial reference point was 1875, in which year lists of Jewish men were taken throughout the Kiev region. This was a perfect year for me to search for a young father named Yankel Kozlov. The best part is that many of these records had been indexed thanks to the wonderful work of volunteers (note: this is all in Russian). These lists can be viewed here (note the page is in Ukrainian, but you can use Google Chrome or Google Translate).

Thanks to the 1875 revision lists and some other related records, I was able to make a list of potential Yankel Kozlovs that lived throughout the Kiev region. But unfortunately for posterity, the 1875 lists only include men. A full census would not be taken until 1897, and by that time my family was living in Pyatigory (whose census records from that year have largely gotten destroyed, including my family's entry). Therefore, it was unlikely to find a female born during these years for these towns, most of which have no extant vital records. So now, with a list of potential Yankel Kozlovs, I turned to my DNA matches on Ancestry and MyHeritage, and I looked far and wide for anyone that might have the name Kozlov (or a similar spelling, such as Koslow, Kozloff, etc.) in their tree by using the search feature "Surname in matches' trees." And I found one!

Ancestry's DNA Match search tools

Tracing Another Family to Find Mine

My mother had one fairly close match with the surname Kozlov in her tree. They shared 123 cM across 10 segments, with the longest segment being 38 cM. My uncle meanwhile shared 102 cM across only 3 segments, but the largest segment was 67 cM! This was certainly large enough for me to pursue further.

I reached out to this match, but I heard nothing back. Nonetheless, this person had a very basic tree, which included the name "Mihail Kozlov" as the person's grandfather, and nothing other than that he died in Staten Island. 

I decided to research this family to see where it would lead. I searched Ancestry for this Mihail but didn't find a thing. Then, I found one Rakhmil Kozlov, born 1921, who died in 1997 in Staten Island. This seemed intriguing, but the real key was finding on Ancestry the index to his Social Security file, shown below. This record identified Rakhmil's parents' names, as well as one other crucial piece of information: his town of birth. The town of birth for Rakhmil (who I later learned went by the Russian nickname Misha) was Skvira. This was intriguing because one of the Yankel Kozlovs I had identified in my search was from Volodarka, a small town that was within the Skvira district. Next, I found on Ancestry another Kozlov from Skvira, Yakov Kozlov, who was listed with the same parents as Rakhmil. Well that was certainly intriguing -- was this Yakov Kozlov named after Tillie's father (Yankel), who might be his own ancestor too?

Rakhmil's entry in Ancestry's Social Security Applications and Claims Index

Based on the naming of this Rakhmil and Yakov, as well as other family members I had identified, it became evident that this family stayed in Russia and did not come to the US until after the fall of the Soviet Union (my Tillie arrived, meanwhile, in 1905). Could it be possible? 

The next step was to order Rakhmil's and Yakov's immigration files from USCIS. For more recent immigrants, as long as the immigrant is deceased, it is actually quite easy to order the individual's immigration file by means of a FOIA request to USCIS (which is separate from USCIS's expensive genealogy program). For records from the second half of the 20th century, I use a FOIA request.

After much anticipation, I received the immigration files of the two brothers, and I was thrilled at what I saw. One row required the immigrant to identify his parents' names and places of birth. And Yakov wrote that his father was born in Volodarka. I was ecstatic -- the town matched one of the exact towns of the Yankel Kozlovs I was pursuing.

Excerpt from Yakov Kozlov's immigration papers held by USCIS, identifying information on his parents

The Kozlovs of Volodarka

Now that I found that this DNA match was from the Kozlov family of Volodarka, I pursued as many records as I could possibly find from there. And next thing I knew it, I had traced this Kozlov family back to the 18th century. I learned that all the Kozlovs of Volodarka were originally from Belaya Tserkov; that in the 1850s they moved to an agricultural colony near Radomyshl named Martynovichi (now in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone); and that after the attempt at farming failed they subsequently relocated to Volodarka, with some family members returning to Belaya Tserkov. 

This was exciting, but there were still two missing pieces: 

(1) How is my Tillie connected with this family? 

(2) How were Rakhmil and Yakov Kozlov precisely connected to the Kozlovs of Volodarka that I had seen in the 1875 revision?  [Note: their father, born in the 1880s, did not appear in the Russian records].

As to my Tillie, not a single Russian record includes her name, as the 1875 records only contain men, she wasn't born in time for the 1858 Russian revision lists, and she doesn't appear in the 1897 census; and these towns have no extant vital records. That being said, the name Kozlov is very infrequently seen in Belaya Tserkov and Volodarka, so it was easy to review the family lists that survived for each family, and the 1850 list of the Belaya Tserkov/Volodarka Kozlovs matched in a way that none of the others did.

The 1850 revision of Belaya Tserkov included a Yankel Kozlov, born ca. 1830. This was appropriate for having Tema (his daughter) born ca. 1870. This Yankel's father's name was Yos Kozlov (which made sense, given that the other Kozlovs' father's name was Yosef, likely named after him). And finally, Yankel's mother's name was Tema. I was so thrilled to see this. I had not come across the name Tema in any other Kozlov family (nor much at all), so seeing that this Yankel's mother was named Tema (that is, Tillie's original name) was so exciting. This is the best proof I have had to date that my Tema was the daughter of this Yankel Kozlov, who was himself the son of Tema. Based on all the facts and DNA I have reviewed, I have concluded this is correct.

Excerpt from the 1850 Belaya Tserkov revision list, showing the Kozlov family, including Yankel, his siblings and parents (with mother Tema)

The Final Connection

I still -- until this month -- did not know precisely how the other DNA match Kozlovs fit with mine, other than the fact that they were also from Volodarka. Ultimately, I knew that my Tema, born ca. 1870, was the daughter of Yankel, who was the son of Yos Shmulovich Kozlov and Tema Meilachova. I also knew that Yankel had an older son who was born around 1855 named Meilach (after the elder Tema's father). So I suspected the other Yosef Kozlov (born ca. 1885 in Volodarka) was either a much younger child of the same couple... or he was a son of Yankel's older son Meilach, and therefore he was my Tillie's nephew. No document in European records has yet answered this question.

Yankel Kozlov appears in 1875 in Volodarka with his eldest son Meilikh

Sometimes you really never know where the missing link will come from, though. One afternoon, I re-stumbled upon some historical indexes listed on the website of the archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (known as "the Joint" or JDC), and interestingly, the Joint had a list of Soviet Jews for whom they retained immigration files from the Soviet immigration wave of the late 1970s. This included the brother Yakov Kozlov mentioned above, who came to the US in 1979. I quickly wrote to the archives there and they sent me his file of only a few pages.

The file asked Yakov to write in the name of his parents, just like the USCIC file mentioned above did. But this time, Yakov gave us the missing link: he identified his father with his patronymic name as "Josiph Meylahovich." This clinched everything together. I now learned that the DNA match I had found was the descendant of Meilach Kozlov, the older brother of my great-great-grandmother Tillie. The DNA match was now complete.

Excerpt from the refugee papers of Yakov Kozlov, identifying his father (retained by the JDC Archives)

But wait, what about Kreindel?

All of this was very exciting, and I was so happy to piece together the mystery of the Kozlov family. But there was one other piece missing. A number of years ago, my mom asked her great-aunt questions about what she knew about her ancestors. One of the items she mentioned was that she had been named after her grandmother Tillie's sister named Kreindel. So shouldn't Kreindel have appeared in these records? I didn't see her neither in Pyatigory nor in Volodarka, nor in the US, so I was stuck.

This is where DNA again came in. When viewing a DNA match, Ancestry lets you see DNA matches who overlap with that that match under a tab called "Shared Matches." So I looked at the overlapping matches with the above-described newly discovered Kozlov branch, and one of these matches had an interesting family tree with a line from the Kiev gubernia. I reverse-traced the Jewish side of his family and found that his grandparents came to the US in the early 1900s from the town of Borshchagovka, located a mere 25 miles from Volodarka.

This time, I was lucky that each of the DNA match's grandparents (who ultimately ended up in Texas, versus my family in New York) appeared in the 1897 Russian census of Borshchagovka, pre-dating their marriage, so I could see information on each of their parents. And the DNA match's grandfather, whose birth name was Kun Tokar (later Joe Tocker in the US), appeared with his parents Leizer Tokar and Kreindel. The name rang an instant bell. And the 1897 census also includes patronymic names - Kreindel's father was Yankel - a perfect match for this Kreindel to be my Tillie's sister!

The Tokar family of Borshchagovka in the 1897 census, showing Joe Tocker (formerly Kun Tokar) on line 3 and his mother Kreyna (here shown as Krenya Yankeleva) on line 2

But there was no way to know whether this Kreindel was indeed a Kozlov, or just a random person whose father was also named Yankel. I needed to see if I could find her maiden name. I could only see that her one son, Kun Tokar turned Joe Tocker, came to the US, and I looked at his death certificate, but it didn't include a maiden name. Dead end.

I had one final idea: Joe had a social security number, and it's possible to request an original of his application (you can request the original social security application of a deceased individual here). I did this and waited until it was mailed to me. Upon receipt, there was nothing but good news. Joe wrote that his mother's surname was Koslov, a perfect match. This therefore confirmed that the DNA match I had located -- whose tree did not even contain the surname Kozlov -- was the missing link to uncovering my Tillie's sister, by means of nothing more than coming up as a match with my Kozlov relative, including his family tree on Ancestry, and me reverse-tracing his ancestry.

Joe Tocker's original Social Security application from 1936, showing his mother's maiden name as Koslov (we'll cut him slack for showing Kreyna as Clara)

In Conclusion

Thanks to DNA matches, I went from knowing nothing about Tillie Levine's family, other than the name of her father. Now I have located her siblings, all their descendants, and several generations further back, and branching out. None of this would have been possible without the advent of DNA testing, and I'm thrilled that these gave me the opportunity to piece my family together.

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