A new challenge - mid-European research. - Genealogists' Forum

marquette · #1 25-08-23, 22:00

A friend has just made me the manager of his DNA results, so we can look into his family tree.

It's going to be a real challenge - I have never had to research in Europe before, and he has very few large DNA matches.

Its early days, but 3 weeks after posting, he only has 132 close matches, the highest shared cM being just 52. In total he has 5670 matches and no common ancestors yet, as I am very challenged in building his family tree.

The highest match assigned paternal is just 18cM and maternal is 32. All the higher matches are unassigned at the moment.

Although he was born in Australia, his parents were born in Switzerland or Germany and came here after they married. He says his mothers family is Italian, but this is not really borne out by his ethnicity.

His ethnicity came back as 47% Germanic European, 31% England/NW Europe, 10% Italian, 7% French and 5% Sweden/Denmark.

I have made a little progress on his dad's family - I was able to find his fathers and uncles baptisms on familysearch, but slowed to a stop a great-grandparent level, when every second man seemed to be called Jos Anton.

If anyone knows anything about German/Swiss or even Italian research, please feel free to suggest ideas.

kiterunner · #2 25-08-23, 22:56

There are a lot of German records on Ancestry, and also on www.archion.de which is another pay site but most records on there are not indexed, so you have to know which town or parish you need for that site to be any use. There are some Swiss records on FamilySearch but you may need to go to a FamilySearch centre or affiliated library to be able to view the images for those.

Mary from Italy · #3 25-08-23, 23:13

I can help with Italian research, but you need to know the places where events happened.

Mary from Italy · #4 25-08-23, 23:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by marquette

His ethnicity came back as 47% Germanic European, 31% England/NW Europe, 10% Italian, 7% French and 5% Sweden/Denmark.

Is that on Ancestry? They seem to assign a lot of French ancestry to northern Italians in my limited experience, presumably because the DNA is similar.

Mary from Italy · #5 25-08-23, 23:20

You could try uploading the results to MyHeritage out of interest; they calculate ethnicity differently from Ancestry. But I don't know how accurate either of them are, especially at fairly low percentages.

You should get some more matches on there, too.

marquette · #6 26-08-23, 02:12

Thanks for the replies.

Looking at the England/NW Europe, it seems to run down through northern and eastern France and the Low Countries, down through part of Germany into North Switzerland, so it might not mean much at all. France means central and southern France.

He's going to see if his birth certificate has any more information - I have to say he has cut ties with his parents and has not had any contact with them for several years. So asking them for information is not a possibility at this point.

From familysearch it appears his paternal (Ruegg) lines are from St Gallen and possibly mothers paternal side (Ita) is from around Zurich. I got back 3 generations on his fathers family, but there are way too many Jos Anton Rueggs to progress further without some other clues.

I will talk to him about uploading to My Heritage and maybe GEDmatch. Still, its early days and taken me years to sort out my own DNA matches.

marquette · #7 26-08-23, 02:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mary from Italy

Is that on Ancestry? They seem to assign a lot of French ancestry to northern Italians in my limited experience, presumably because the DNA is similar.

Yes from Ancestry. But if his mother was "Italian" (but born in Switzerland) as she claimed or even half Italian, I would have thought the percentage was higher. Even French and Italian combined is a low estimate for him to be a quarter Italian.

Qwackers · #8 26-08-23, 06:47

Hi , I had my DNA done through My heritage , and found my closest match , was indeed a relation . I was amazed . as i always scoffed at the tests , I had to work through some ancestors lists but got there in the end . So dont be put off .

kiterunner · #9 26-08-23, 09:25

There are a lot of Catholic parish registers on a free site called Matricula Icarus:

https://www.icar-us.eu/en/cooperatio...als/matricula/

Mary from Italy · #10 26-08-23, 15:41

Part of Switzerland is Italian-speaking, as you probably know.

Are there any Italian-sounding names in the family?

I suppose you've looked at online trees?

Have a look at those on MyHeritage and Geneanet as well as Ancestry if you haven't done already; they're sometimes better for non-English-speaking countries.

FamilySearch is also worth a try.