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Is the catholic priest my great-grandpa?

Discussions regarding DNA & Genetic Genealogy.
vhenriksen
male
Messaggi: 2
Hi everyone,

So, my mom is convinced that her real paternal grandpa was a Polish Catholic priest, and not the non-controversial official grandpa. This is based on numerous rumours in the family and a very close relationship between the priest, my mom's paternal grandmother, and their alleged son, my mom's dad. According to the story, my mom's dad was the only product of this forbidden relationship. If true, his many brothers and sister were "half-siblings".

Being trained in critical thinking and skepticism, I wanted to test if this is true and not just accept it to be so. I ordered two DNA-tests from MyHeritage - one for my mom and one for her (officially) first cousin. Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but as far as I've gathered, they should have an average DNA-match of 12,5% if my mom and cousin share two grandparents (meaning the priest story isn't true). And the range would be about 7.31% - 13.8%. However, if the priest IS my mom's real grandpa, she and her (half)-cousin would share about half as much DNA, so an average of 6,25%, right?

Well, the result was 6,7% which points towards the priest being my mom's real paternal grandpa. But how sure should I be that it's correct? Of course, the cause could be some yet unknown funny business on the cousin's end and not my mom's, but lets say that isn't the case. How confident would you folks be with that result? And what would you do to become even more certain?

Thanks!
Vincent
ericdubois
male
Volunteer moderator
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6.7% (498cM) could mean either first cousin (396-1397), matching the official relationship, or half first cousin (156-979), matching the family rumors. So this test is not sufficient to confirm either theory.

ideally, you should try testing a close relative of the priest (niece, nephew, etc.) but that probably won't be easy to achieve.

Another option would be to test someone related to the official grandfather but not the grandmother (niece, nephew, etc.). The closer the better. If that person matches your mom's cousin but not your mom, it would make the rumors more credible.

Eric
vhenriksen
male
Messaggi: 2
Thanks a lot Eric. I have already looked through the DNA-matches on MyHeritage to find someone who might be related to my mom through the priest, but I haven't found anything yet. I'm in Denmark where all the church books have been scanned and put online, so it would have been quite easy to find relatives of the priest and maybe contact them. But my mom is Polish and the priest was from the southeastern corner of Poland that belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the two World Wars haven't made genealogy easier down there...

I know almost nothing about my official great-grandfather's family, so that's also going to be difficult. He was from the Russian Empire. Also a difficult source-situation :P I would probably have to travel to Belarus to learn more...

But given the pretty low cM-number, am I right in leaning towards the priest-hypothesis being true? As in it being a bit more probable?

Oh and some additional information. My mom's results showed 21,2% Balkan ancestry and her cousin had 0%. The Balkan ethnic "blob" includes only one little part of Poland - the southeastern corner. All of my mom's ancestors, that I know of, were from northeastern Poland. Could the priest explain those 21,2%? Or should I be even more skeptical about those ethnic catagories than I already am?
ericdubois
male
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Messaggi: 5083
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Polish genealogy is hard for me too. I have some dead ends in that country.

I would be a bit skeptical about using ethnicity estimates to decide this. But if you have many matches in southeastern Poland that would increase the credibility of the family rumors. Keep in mind that there has been a lot of migration in that area in the 20th century.

I agree that the possibility of the priest being your biological ancestor is a bit more probable than the official ancestry. Keep combing through your matches for supporting arguments.

Eric
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