Joyce’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goals: Identify Joyce’s paternal great grandparents, and find Joyce’s paternal grandfather’s original name

Joyce reached out for help with researching her paternal grandfather John. John was born in Denmark, and Joyce had an approximate birthdate in the early 1880s and possible birth location in one of two small towns within the Nordjylland province for him. John had come to Canada as a young adult, possibly coming via the United States first, just after the turn of the century. His parents’ names were possibly Thomas, and Inger Borup, per his own marriage registration.

Joyce’s uncle, John Jr, had tested on Ancestry, and with him being the closest related tester to John Sr, his DNA results were the best to work with. Joyce had also uploaded his DNA to MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, and Gedmatch.

Across all the DNA sites, John Jr’s paternal matches were all 70cm and under- fairly low. Prior to this search, the “lowest highest match” I had used to solve an unknown parentage search was 93cm.

The first few paternal matches of John Jr’s also had family mysteries of their own or no tree, so the first useable match to work with ended up being a 55cm match on Ancestry, and he had a nice tree.

The 55cm match was part of a cluster of matches who were all descended from a couple that were both born in Denmark in the 1810s. I was able to tie seven matches back to this most recent common ancestor couple with the names Anker Bjornsen and Maren Paulsdatter. Based on how low the matches were to John Jr, I figured John was not going to be descended from the most recent common ancestor couple, but instead from one of their siblings.

John Jr’s matches were low, but on Ancestry they did sort into a few distinct groups. I was also able to connect four matches from another match group to common ancestors from Denmark with the last name Mathiesen. Their centimorgan range was from 45cm down to 19cm.

I searched through trees of the Bjornsen/Paulsdatter couple and wondered which side I should start building out first. It was a little daunting being 200 years back, and with so few matches that were very distant, I wondered if I would even be able to narrow it back down.

However, as it such often happens, certain last names caught my eye. As I looked at siblings of Maren Paulsdatter in trees, I noticed she had a sister that married a man with the Mathiesen last name. I was intrigued, and started to build the downtree from the Paulsdatter/Mathiesen couple.

I also started to build up from the small match cluster that had the Mathiesen ancestor, and it turned out that their common ancestor Hans Mathiesen was a brother of the Mathiesen from the Mathiesen/Paulsdatter couple. So now I had a union couple connecting the two small match clusters!

The Paulsdatter/Mathiesen couple had a son named Thomas Mathiesen, which had me very curious and even more so after finding out that Thomas had married a woman named Johanne Borup. It seemed like the information Joyce had was coming together and parts of it were true.

Thomas Mathiesen and Johanne Borup had had many children, including one son named Johan Mathiesen, born exactly 2 days and 2 years off the birthdate that Joyce had for her grandfather. He was also born in one of the two small towns Joyce thought her grandfather had been born in.

I traced Johan through the censuses, with his last appearance living with his family as a teenager being in 1901. By 1906, he was not living with them anymore, and I was unable to find any other records of him in Denmark. I was able to find a ship passenger record of him coming from Denmark to the United States as well which stated his first trip to the USA had been in 1906.

The name Johan Mathiesen was also very similar to Joyce’s grandfather’s name he used in Canada, which was John Matthews. With the details Joyce had, combined with DNA evidence, I knew Johan Mathiesen had to be the original name of Joyce’s paternal grandfather, and his parents were Thomas Mathiesen and Johanne Borup.

I presented my findings to Joyce who was very pleased and agreed I had solved her family’s search. After revisiting documents she had found, Joyce shared that a genealogist specializing in Danish records had also suggested her grandfather was Johan Mathiesen, before DNA tests were being used to supplement genealogy paper trails.

Joyce and her family are very glad to be able to build back their paternal grandfather’s side of the tree and finally know his original name.