Which Noll is it?

The 52 Ancestors challenge for Week 2 2018 is ‘Favourite Photo’.  Those of you who know me would not be surprised about which photo I chose for this weeks challenge.  If you have been following my research you will known that one of my main brick walls is finding the father of my paternal grandmother Thelma Griffin, my great grandfather (52Ancestors #4). Thelma always knew she was illegitimate, her birth certificate lists her father as ‘not known’.  All we know is that he must have been in Adelaide, South Australia around August 1903.

Unknown man

This of course isn’t the favourite photo, but solving the mystery of who he might be has been one of my primary DNA goals.  I had my first DNA test in 2010, but it took nearly 7 years for me to be able to piece together enough match information to be able to come close to solving this mystery.

I’ve tested everywhere.  I’ve tested my mother everywhere.  I’m very lucky to have been able to do that.  After 7 years I’ve been able to find enough matches on my fathers paternal side to be able to be isolate matches that are probably on his mothers side.  I had a breakthrough at AncestryDNA in early 2017 where I found several 4th cousins who all matched each other and didn’t match any of my other paternal matches, so it was a high chance they were matches on my ‘unknown’ line.

As is the way, very few of these matches responded to me on AncestryDNA, but analysing one of the trees and seeing some South Australian ancestry enabled me to search for more possible matches.  I searched my more ‘distant’ matches for similar names, at all my testing sites and this led me to identifying some possible common ancestors.  I found several matches that all had one of two sets of possible 4th great grandparents in their trees.  From there I worked forward in time trying to identify likely ‘males’ who may have been in ‘the right place, at the right time’.  Then I worked back in time from my matches, making sure that all the matches still tracked back to these ancestors and that the DNA shared with them also seemed appropriate for the ‘probable’ relationships.

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This research suggested that my mystery great grandfather may have been Prussian, descended from early emigrants to South Australia.  This could explain my high European West ethnicity, showing about 29% at AncestryDNA, when I can only account for about 3% from my known ancestry.  Although this ancestor should only account for approx 12.5%!

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Ethnicity information at 23andMe is much more interesting, they suggest my predicted German ethnicity is quite close, between 1840 -1900 – so if my theory is right it’s spot on!

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I need to give a big thank you to the South Australian Family History Groups who wrote such wonderful histories of the Noll, Wedding and Wohling families back in the 1970’s and all the wonderful pedigrees and photos that they included. It was through these books that I was able to piece together many of the connections between my DNA matches and my possible shared Prussian ancestors.

After extensive research I became fairly certain that I was descended from one of the sons of Johann Friedrich Wilhelm NOLL and Maria Elizabeth WOHLING.  The ‘Noll Family History 1850 -1976’ actually provided me with photos of these three sons.  This became my favourite photo for 2017.  I carried it around everywhere with me, often producing it for informal discussions over dinner, taking straw polls and comparing facial features!  What do you think?

3 brothers and us

The candidates

My great grandmother Edith (Edie) Griffin is stated as living in Croydon Adelaide in April 1904 when my grandmother Thelma was born.  Edie was 17, working as an occupation machinist.  Interestingly, the youngest sister of the Noll brothers, Louisa Wilhelmina Noll, was exactly the same age as Edie also worked as a machinist.  Edith grew up in Brompton and the Nolls lived close by, so perhaps Edith and Louisa were friends. They probably went to school together and may even have worked in the same place.  Croydon and Brompton are very close in proximity and may well be references to the same place.

Heinrich Charles Otto NOLL – In 1903, Henry was married to Anne Frances Balfour (nee Richards).  He was living in Brompton in 1902 at the time his son Alfred was born and had moved to Ridleyton by 1905.  He became a minister in 1911 and died in 1938 aged 58.

Friedrich Wilhelm NOLL – The eldest of the three brothers who in 1903 was married to Anna Mabel Emery.  He had three children by this time, but two had died as infants and his wife Annie was said to have never recovered, suffering poor health for the rest of her life.   His fourth child was born in November 1903 so wife Annie would have been six months pregnant at the time Thelma was conceived.  He lived in West Street Brompton after he married in 1897, but by the time his daughter was born in 1903 he was living in Bowden and by 1909 in Hindmarsh. He died in 1933, aged 57.

Otto Eduard NOLL – The youngest of the Noll brothers and in 1903 he was 21 and single.  Perhaps the most likely candidate, still living at home in Brompton.  He married Laura Elizabeth NICHOLS in 1908 and died 20 years later in 1928, at the early age of 45 – far too young. Could he be my great grandfather?

DNA results so far…

To test my theory I managed to find a grandson of Otto (Cousin A) and his DNA test confirmed that we were quite closely related.  If Otto is my great grandfather then our relationship would be half 1st cousins once removed.  If Fred or Henry were my great grandfather then my relationship to Cousin A would be 2nd cousins once removed.  As luck would have it, after looking at the expected cMs for these relationships our match is somewhere between the two. Our shared DNA was between 164-210 cMs depending which testing site you looked at!  We also have a large X match at 74cMs, which does suggests a relationship via Cousin A’s great grandmother Maria Wohling.

Subsequently we both matched another descendant of Maria’s parents (Cousin B) which provided a triangulated match on the X chromosome suggesting the relationship to the Wohling line was confirmed.  All three cousins match each other on identical segments.

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As far as chromosomes 1-22 go, Cousin A and I share on multiple segments many of which are not yet triangulated, but this is largely due to the fact that the 40+ matches we have at AncestryDNA have not uploaded their results to www.gedmatch.com, so they cannot be compared at the chromosome level.  The sheer number of matches that all fit this hypothesis are strong evidence (I believe) that I am on the right track.

Of the matches at AncestryDNA only six have uploaded their results to GEDmatch.  Triangulated matches have confirmed relationships to distant ancestors on both the Noll and Wohling sides, but more are needed.

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More DNA tests required…

Are you descended from any of the ancestors listed below?  Have you DNA tested?  If so, I would love to be able to compare our results at GEDmatch.   I am particularly interested in anyone descended from the three NOLL brothers and would be willing to fund autosomal DNA tests, on the understanding that results would be uploaded to GEDmatch, or another testing site that provides chromosome analysis.

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To access the tree at Wikitree, please click here.

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As always, if you can help please do not hesitate to contact me via this blog or via private message at Wikitree.

2021 Postscript: You can now hear me talk about this DNA journey on You Tube.

Featured Image: Brompton Hotel

An historic event – 52 Ancestors, DNA confirmed!

The journey so far

A momentous milestone was achieved last month, and no, it wasn’t that I have written about ANY of my ancestors for the 52 ancestors challenge, the main reason for starting this blog site 2 years ago!  At the time, I was very enthusiastic and excited by the thought of the project but I must have known I couldn’t keep up the weekly challenge given the tagline ‘starting small!’  It’s probably fitting that my inaugural post is about my genetic research, when you think of how totally obsessed I have become with solving various mysteries associated with my ancestral roots in the past few years.

Cause for celebration –  I now have 52 confirmed DNA ancestors!  It has however been a long hard slog and don’t let anyone tell you it’s easy.  You might think 52 confirmed ancestors is a lot, but if we go out 7 generations (that’s to 6th cousins) we all have a total of 254 direct ancestors who may have contributed to our DNA.  So after 6 years since my Family Finder autosomal test with FTDNA I am about 20% of the way there, but don’t forget much of what I have achieved so far is what they call ‘low hanging fruit!’  Of those 52, 28 of those are clearly confirmed and the remaining 24 we have confirmed connections back to 12 sets of ancestral couples.

To start doing DNA research, getting your head around the 4 Kinds of DNA for Genetic Genealogy is the most important first step, no one can explain that better than Roberta Estes.  Reading her stories about how DNA has helped her in understanding her family history as part of the 52 ancestors challenge is always inspiring.

I just thought I’d share some quick comments about my progress to date on each of the 4 Kinds of DNA:

Y-DNA

Passed down from father to sons.  Being female I don’t have any Y-DNA passed to me from my father.  A common problem in our family, particularly on my maternal side, is that the male line had a tendency to die out.   So I have had to rely on the generosity of other extended male family members to help me.  So far, I have test kits for my COAT, ROBERTS, CASSIDY and SWEENEY lines.  I am still searching for possible candidates for my BRADLEY, GRIFFIN and MURPHY lines.  In particular the COAT line has given me loads of interesting follow up research, but I’ll tell you more about that in a subsequent post! These tests helped me confirm 7 of my 52 ancestors, so 13%.

Mitochondrial DNA – better known as mtDNA.

Only females can take this test, but unlike Y-DNA which only gets passed down to sons, women pass this on to all their children.  I had the full sequence mtDNA test back in early 2011 and six years later only have six matches and all of them at a genetic distance of 3, which many say is too far out to worry about!  My maternal haplogroup is J1c5, it is said to have originated between 8-13,000 years ago, European, but often found in West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia or North Asia.  My maternal line traces back to County Clare in Ireland.  

By contrast, my fathers maternal haplogroup (which I was able to obtain by testing a distant cousin), is H1a1e, also European and originating 15-20,000 years ago, also found at significant frequency in the Near East and in some Middle Eastern populations.  It is the most common haplogroup for most Europeans being about 14% of the population. Consequently, it is not so surprising that we have 192 full sequence matches, with 37 of them a genetic distance of 1.  

Unfortunately, no DNA confirmations have yet come from these two tests.

Autosomal DNA

I like to think of this as the ‘cousins’ test.  It’s the part I love best, trying to untangle lines and identify where your DNA segment matches are coming from, a great big puzzle! Unlike Y-DNA and mtDNA it can’t just be attributed to one person up the line, but any of them! This means finding other cousins to compare your results to.  You can either recruit more testers or just build on your results as you find matches.  Every new confirmed match is a clue to finding more matches.  The remaining 45 confirmed ancestors (including the 12 couples) I have found from this type of analysis.  After about 5 years of research I was only up to about 17, mainly confirmations of my known tree through targeted testing.  In 2015, I reached a turning point, a Mac version of Genome Mate Pro was released and I haven’t looked back.  The program helps you be systematic in your approach to your research and results show for themselves. If you haven’t used it yet, I’d encourage you to give it a go, it’s a free download and they have a great support network.

X chromosome

Not to be confused with mtDNA,  the X chromosome has special inheritance patterns and in theory can help you find your common ancestor.  I’ve had a lot of fun colouring in my charts which you can find on The Genetic Genealogist, by Blaine Bettinger which I do for all my known cousins so I know when ‘X’ might be relevant.  I haven’t had any success, YET, in having this help me confirm any ancestors but it has helped me narrow down the possibilities for some of my autosomal matches.

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See my full tree at Wikitree ! embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

Why did I start this and where to from here?

I started out on my DNA journey to test a theory about my very elusive 2nd great grandfather, the father of Abigail COURTNEY, Arthur George COURTENAY or is it really George William COURTNEY?  I am no closer to finding him than I was when I started but I have now finally established that there are no known male descendants who may have carried his Courtney Y-DNA.  So, its only autosomal testing that can help me – one segment at a time!

The other major goal is to identify the father of my paternal grandmother, Thelma Irene GRIFFIN.  The mystery man who must have been in Adelaide, South Australia around 1903. I am in search of cousins from her known GRIFFIN line to help me isolate that DNA from the segments I have inherited from her father.  I thought I had a contender, right place, right time, but as will happen with DNA, subsequent testers have proven that those segments came from my fathers paternal side.  Back to the drawing board….  If you are a Griffin cousin please let me know if you are interested in helping with this research.