This was going to be soooo cool. But now, it's back to the drawing board.
A while back I was able to show that my great grandfather, Abraham Garber, had a full brother whose last name was Lederman. I did this through a combination of traditional records research and DNA results. I did a twelve-part series on that research. The last post may be viewed here. In short, the Lederman I tested is my second cousin one-removed. Pretty close.
Feeling emboldened, I began to think that perhaps the family story that there had been four brothers in the Old Country who each adopted different surnames might, indeed, be true (see the story here). So, I set out the find the unusual name that had been identified as the original one: Utchenik.
Now ordinarily I would not recommend trying to spend much time trying to prove family stories, but Utchenik is an unusual name and finding an Utchenik family was not particularly difficult. There seemed to be one main Utchenik family who primarily settled in Detroit, Michigan (also the place where one of my Ledermans settled). Some Utcheniks from the same related clan were also in Connecticut, Massachusetts and, for a short while, Florida. The family was also from Volhynia Gubernia - the same area as my Garber-Lederman family. I was not successful in finding a family tie via paper records.
My main problem was finding some Utcheniks to DNA test.
A few years ago I located one Utchenik descendant named Greenberg who agreed to test. His grandmother was an Utchenik by birth. His autosomal DNA test results did not include my Garbers or Lederman as strong matches.[1] I know that sometimes third cousins may not appear as matches in autosomal DNA and, in at least one instance, that is the case in my own family. So I was not dissuaded from my quest with these particular results. If I could only find a male Utchenik to test for Y-DNA!
That was a challenge until recently when a male Utchenik contacted me after seeing one of blog posts (Hurrah for blog posts!).
He agree to test.
I received his autosomal DNA results a few weeks ago. Again, nothing to get too excited about. Lederman did not come up as a match at all. There did seem to be a nice stack of Garbers matching on chromosome 15:
What I was really hoping for was a good haplogroup match on Y-DNA. It was not to be.
This morning I received the Y-DNA 37 marker results. Utchenik came in at 37 markers in haplogroup E-M35. My Garber males and Lederman match exactly at 67 markers in predicted haplogroup T-M70. [2]
Sigh.
So, I am thinking that, if we are related, it is not along the Garber-Lederman line.
The good news? I have another Utchenik family I am looking at. Two Utchenik brothers from Polonnoye (about 10 miles from my family's tow of Lubin) changed their surname to Robinson after immigration. The bad news? One brother had no children and the other had only girls. The pretty good news? One daughter is still available to test. I am hoping she agrees.
Meanwhile, I am trying to get around a seeming paucity of records on these Robinson/Utcheniks. Wish me luck!
Notes:
1. Annette and Mel, who are 1C1R to me and 2 C to Lederman, show up sharing 99 cms and 14 largest segment (projected 3rd to 5th cousins) and 63 cms/9 cms (5th cousins to remote) with Greenberg, respectively. Greenberg shared only 56 cms and a largest segment of 8 (5th to remote) with Lederman. Generally, we like to see over 100 cms total and over 20 (better 30 cms) for the longest segment. My documented third cousins who show up as matches to me may have large segments under 20, but share more than 100 cms total. So, the Greenberg matches were nothing for a member of this endogamous Ashkenazi Jewish family to get excited about.
2. In case anyone is wondering, for my own edification I did compare STRs and there are over 40 differences between Utchenik (E-M35) and my Garber-Lederman (T-M70) group at the 37 marker level - in no way a close match.
