Colonial Jewish Records and Using DNA to Prove Jewish Ancestry

Рет қаралды 9,923

2 жыл бұрын

On this season of KZfaqr Family Trees, I dig into the family tree of Matt Baker from Useful Charts.
On this fifth episode, we look further into Matt's Levy ancestry, exploring the life of his 6th-great grandfather Nathan Levy. Was Nathan Levy's father Nathan Levy or Asher Levy? We Nathan truly a grandson of Moses Raphael Levy? Was Nathan Levy Jewish? Could we prove any of this through DNA testing?
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Пікірлер: 60

@michaelvanleesten9517 Жыл бұрын

While DNA confirmed that my Y-Haplogroup is Ashkenazi,I was able to trace my patrilineal ancestry through colonial records in Suriname to the late 1600s. The American Jewish Archives were EXTREMELY helpful in helping me trace further back to pre-Inquisition Spain. Given my mostly African-American ancestry, it was great to get such deep detail regarding my lineage which my older relatives had long suspected based on family lore alone. TLDR: the archivists at American Jewish Archives were SUPER helpful.

@mrs.kpbailey Жыл бұрын

Fascinating!

@thomasspicer4130 2 жыл бұрын

This is one of my favourite series on your channel combining and correlating DNA with historical records is amazing your quickly becoming one of my favourite channels on KZfaq 👌🏼👌🏼

@CharlotteIssyvoo 2 жыл бұрын

Matt is my husband, so I find this especially interesting. When he converted to Judaism, he picked Levi as his Hebrew name. But I'm also interested because, though my maternal line is not Jewish (my paternal line is), I'd always heard that my maternal great-grandmother was Jewish. Doing my genealogy, I found that this rumour probably comes from the fact that her grandfather Schissel was (Hungarian) Jewish. But I haven't been able to confirm this. I think I might be able to do what you've done with Matt here: Look at my ggg-grandfather's Schissel descendant's DNA and see if it includes a bit of Ashkenazi Jewish DNA. Am I right? I don't think it would be hard to trace them, because they remained in Germany, where Christian records are easy to find.

@Ossiecraft 8 ай бұрын

The Levys of tancook are a sephardic Levite line that is a paternal line of hebrew priests from Aaron, maternal lines dont matter when it comes to levites of the temple. i am a levy, my father was born on tancook in 1939

@GeneaVlogger 8 ай бұрын

@Ossiecraft Are you from the same Levy family as Matt? If so, have any of the male Levy members in your family done a Y-DNA test with FTDNA or through Whole Genome Sequencing?

@CharlotteIssyvoo 8 ай бұрын

@@Ossiecraft Turns out they were actually Ashkenazi but converted to Sephardi practice because they were the only Ashkenazi Jews in New York at the time.

@Chaotic_Pixie 2 жыл бұрын

As always, interesting and informative.

@CallieandJordanSquad 2 жыл бұрын

Found your channel through Vid IQ your channel was reviewed so I thought that I would check your videos. Enjoyed watching thanks for sharing a new subscriber and we smashed that thumbs up button.

@GeneaVlogger 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for checking out my videos and glad you enjoyed!

@nickmlakar917 2 жыл бұрын

Can't wait for next season!

@skarasik4021 2 жыл бұрын

There was a Sephardic Jewish community in Newport Rhode Island during the colonial period.

@vada7259 2 жыл бұрын

Very interesting & info-filled episode! Particularly interested in delving into The AJHS Oppenheim Collection, per Jews in Colonial America - Thanks 🌿

@kristaharp926 Жыл бұрын

I’m a 5th cousin to Matt Baker and my maternal grandmother is a Levy descending from Gersham Levy’s line also.

@chaoking3119 2 жыл бұрын

I would love to see the results of the BigY test, if one is done.

@JungleJargon 2 жыл бұрын

My Y chromosome test got me past a brick wall in my ancestry. My ancestor wasn’t mentioned along with other family members and there was a conflict as to which state he was born in. And yet he seemed to accompany them in their travels and visa-versa. It turns out that I am a close paternal cousin of their other descendants! Not only that, my ancestor’s second name is the first name of the ancestor on the other side of the brick wall!

@wafee2001 2 жыл бұрын

Genealogy discussion always catch my attention especially from those lines.

@JB-fv6vx 2 ай бұрын

In Canadian land and property records "of" plus a location indicates that is considered their current residence, not their birth place. I'd be looking for records for Isaac and Nathan in Rhode Island, not Philadelphia, and possibly also Hart. Nathan is "of" Halifax because he's gone to live with his brother who is the established property holder.

@robblack5248 Жыл бұрын

Fascinating story, but I'm confused. Why assume that an 18th century land conveyance descriptor "of Rhode Island" would signify the person's origin? In my research it was always about legal residence at the time of the transaction. Also were there not laws in R.I. making it the most tolerant of Jews of all the British North American colonies? First synagogue built in America, etc.? Ideal residence, perhaps, if that Levy merchant were Jewish -- and entirely possible he had originally come from Philadelphia.

@PYMund 2 жыл бұрын

The deed registers are eerily similar - from layout, to reference method, even to handwriting - to their Lviv counterparts of the same era!

@object-official Жыл бұрын

I have Jewish ancestors from Lviv.

@TheCarnivalguy 2 жыл бұрын

Zeppo Marx’s second wife was Barbara Blakeley who would later marry Frank Sinatra. Barbara stated later that Zeppo did not require her to convert to Judaism as she was Methodist. Zeppo told Barbara she became Jewish by “injection”. No scientific basis, but a funny anecdote nonetheless! 😂

@clair8880 2 жыл бұрын

I don’t have the money right now to go and look for documents, and I’ve recently discovered Jewish ancestry on my maternal side. So I only have my grandmother with me and her own recollection of her own relatives. However, she couldn’t get past her great-grandmother, as she wasn’t able to meet her (she met her great-grandfather who was Christian. The maternal side probably converted too somewhere down the line) because she died in childbirth really young :(.

@roboparks 11 ай бұрын

Earliest Jewish peoples in the American -British Colonies. The Settlement which is now Rhode Island. But was apart of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1649 ?

@grahamparks1645 2 жыл бұрын

I think “of” just means lives there or has property there the way this is worded investigate Hart try and find his connection to the Levy’s?

@Seahorse20 Жыл бұрын

It’s not surprising that someone with the surname Levy has Y-haplogroup R1a-cts6. This is a terminal branch of R1a-Z93, which is my haplogroup. R1a-Z93 is Ashkenazi Levite.

@CitizenTurtleIsland Жыл бұрын

I (one generation removed from Germany) am, on and off, trying to figure out distant AJ (paternal mostly) and SJ (maternal mostly). As part of this DNA searching... I do see American matches pulled into lists of shared matches involving what I think is Jewish DNA... and yet those matches seem to have family that has been in the USA (all branches) going back to Colonial times. Initially I found this surprising... but now I'm just keeping that in the back of my mind as "something" to be aware of. A pattern is emerging where they seem to have started in the SE USA and then spread out. They or their more recent ancestors are from an area including North Carolina... Tennessee... Kentucky. (Some autosomal DNA seems to stick around for many generations!) I really appreciate this video that tries to investigate signs of distant Jewish ancestry. (My view... I want the facts... just the facts... to misquote Joe Friday. If I discovered that I was part Berber or whatever, I'd still be trying to figure this out.)

@shakos4105 2 жыл бұрын

I just got my DNA results back from FamilyTreeDNA and I am honestly super shocked. Both my parents are Egyptian but I only have "4% Morrocan and Egyptian" in me. Apparently I am 13% Sephardic Jewish, 74% Southern Levant, and 3% from the Horn of Africa(Ethiopia and Somalia). No idea how I have so little Egyptian lol, am I adopted? 😂

@DougWinfield 2 жыл бұрын

That's probably not an uncommon admixture for someone of mixed North African / converted Jewish origins in Egypt.

@leylamohamed7950 2 жыл бұрын

Well we're nearly identical...Mine said 40% southern levant, 33.7% shepherdic Jewish, 11.4% Arabian peninsula & the rest are small percentage of Anatolia/ mesopotamia & Nigerian...I'm Palestinian from Nablus btw..😭😭 Edit:. I did ancestry DNA test.

@yonboi6644 2 жыл бұрын

Well Southern Levantine people aren't that genetically different from Egyptians close to them. So it could be that you're Egyptian, just from a more Northern/Eastern part of Egypt that is more genetically similar to the Levant. Also keep in mind these DNA tests are really only reliable for describing the general region you're from, but they're pretty bad or inconsistent when you start getting into country or ethnicity. I'm sure if you took other DNA tests you'd still get NE African or SW Asian, but you'd see different ethnic estimates

@jordanleighwheatley 2 жыл бұрын

Is family tree dna better for north African ancestry? My mom and I have small amounts of north African and Iranian ancestry and that's the mystery im currently researching

@condor237 Жыл бұрын

Are you from Alexandria? You could be descended from Greeks who converted to Islam

@JungleJargon 2 жыл бұрын

The R paternal haplogroup is Gomer. R1a is Ashkenaz R1b is Riphath.

@clair8880 2 жыл бұрын

Yep! I’m Ashkenazim on my maternal side and my haplogroup is R1a :)

@Seahorse20 Жыл бұрын

My haplogroup is R1a-Z93. It’s an Ashkenazi Levite haplogroup.

@joantrotter3005 2 жыл бұрын

So which DNA test do you think is most accurate? Most of my family did Ancestry, and one did 23&me. Our cousin matches are correct, but the ethnicity estimates are not, and seem even more inaccurate with each update! And although they finally said my husband is part Native American, they took away other ethnicities. The family member that did 23&me showed 6% sub Saharan. It's rather infuriating!

@yonboi6644 2 жыл бұрын

No DNA test is the most accurate. However 23&Me and Ancestry is best for North Americans while MyHeritage is best for Europeans or Jews (including non-Ashkenazi Jews). However keep in mind that these are just estimates. They're good at telling you the general area like Europe, East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, but they're terrible/inconsistent at telling you what country or ethnicity you come from.

@Richard-zm6pt 2 жыл бұрын

Of the place does mean residing there, not born there.

@melissahinton8928 2 жыл бұрын

Hi, I thought you mentioned your next family tree deep dive would be of an African American person? Is the cynical historian African American?

@GeneaVlogger 2 жыл бұрын

Cynical Historian is not African American but the season after Cynical Historian will be tracing the family tree for Jabari Walker from the channel From Nothing.

@melissahinton8928 2 жыл бұрын

@@GeneaVlogger great thank you

@lauraleecreations3217 2 жыл бұрын

💗💗💗💗💗

@grahamparks1645 2 жыл бұрын

Maybe not born in Rhode Island but residing there?

@grahamparks1645 2 жыл бұрын

A pied de terre of Isaac Levy is Rhode Island?

@Amari_14 2 жыл бұрын

First

@danieleyre8913 2 жыл бұрын

Why would anyone give a toss if they have distant Jewish ancestry or not?

@DougWinfield 2 жыл бұрын

There are whole societies of people who are Mayflower descendents. It's interesting to know how varied and mixed the early populations of British North America were.

@clair8880 2 жыл бұрын

Personally I think it’s really important to at least be aware of it. The numerous persecutions they faced because of antisemitism led them to convert and “conform”. I think it’s just right to be aware (and proud) of something that was so demonized and persecuted that it led to conformism and to conversion.

@canaryinacoalmine7267 2 жыл бұрын

Unless the Jewish DNA comes from the mothers line, then it is irrelevant. Also that chain can not be broken. I mean you can have all the Jewish ancestry and if its all on your daddies side you are not a Jew.

@GeneaVlogger 2 жыл бұрын

Jewish DNA is relevant to genealogy no matter which line it is through. You are conflating the religious idea of "Who is a Jew" with the actual focus of this video - identifying Jewish ancestry.

@ElisabethOrchard 2 жыл бұрын

As it was already pointed out, this is not the point of the video. But I am curious to hear what you think about the following: Let's say a person unaware of any Jewish heritage does some genealogy research. In the end it turns out one of their direct maternal ancestors was Jewish. How far back is too far back for that person, who has no knowledge about Jewish culture and all, to be Jewish. Does it make a difference if the Jewish ancestress is their first great-grandma or their 13th great-grandma or would you say no matter how far back, as long as it is the direct maternal line, they are technically Jewish, even though they know nothing about Judaism. Also, would Jewish communities accept that person calling themselves Jewish in either case or would they find that ridiculous? Would that change if they tried to learn about Judaism and the culture? This is purely hypothetical, mind you, but somehow I started wondering about this a while ago when I was discussing surprising DNA results with some people.

@justinhall3243 2 жыл бұрын

@@ElisabethOrchard This was something akin to my situation. Late in life I discovered that my 2nd great maternal grandmother was Jewish. I spoke with Jewish community leaders and they assured me that I was 100% Jewish. However I don't feel Jewish, I was not raised in that religion or community and I have no connection to it. In short while I have a little Jewish ancestry I don't consider myself Jewish in any meaningful way.

@danieleyre8913 2 жыл бұрын

@@justinhall3243 4 generations on: You probably don’t have much of her DNA anyway.

@TS-xw3zr 2 жыл бұрын

@@justinhall3243 yep ur 100%Jewish. If u practice Judaism u will 'feel Jewish'. Shame not to explore ur heritage....