Fanny Ginsberg of Lancashire

For Ashkenazi Jews, most DNA Matching tools are effective at identifying relatives near the top of the match list. Further down there are matches who are really not matches. They may have an insignificant amount of DNA from multiple ancestors which, combined, appears like a significant match. This can happen with all matching services, including Ancestry.

Sometimes the match includes DNA on the X chromosome, where matches rarely indicate a recent common ancestry. It may also include DNA that is so common to the ethnic group that again it does not signify an actual close relation. Ancestry avoids these errors, which is why I think it does the best job predicting cousins.

One match on my Ancestry list, listed as "J.C," is stronger than that of any documented third cousin. Ancestry also shows that all of our top mutual DNA matches are related through my paternal Grandma Mae or her mother Lizzie Chapman, nee Ginsberg. When I saw on 23andMe exactly where on the genome Joanne and I match, every large segment was in an area inherited from Grandma Mae.

Joanne Clarke is 22% Jewish. She knew that one of her grandmothers was adopted by the McCradiey family, which lived in a village south of Manchester, Lancashire, England. One story told by her family was that a Jewish couple boarded with them but left behind an abandoned baby girl later known as Florence McCradiey Birchall, mother of nine.

This story did not provide the names of these Jewish visitors. Meanwhile, for some reason, Joanne's uncle Harry Birchall had in his possession a 1911 naturalization paper for a 32-year old Russian immigrant tailor who identified himself as "Chiel Blum, also known as Leon Ginsberg." ("Chiel" would be a rare shorthand for "Yekhiel," a not-so-rare Hebrew name.) The paper did not name his wife, but did name his son, 3-year old David Ginsberg.

Searching the 1911 UK Census on Ancestry, I found Leon and David along with Leon's slightly-older wife Fanny. They went by Ginsberg. I also found the McRadiey's. Both families lived in Salford, Lancashire.  Searching the birth registrations, I found that both Florence McCradiey Birchall and David Ginsberg were born during the last three months of 1907.

In 1901, a Chiel Blum sailed across the North Sea from Hamburg, Germany, to Grimsby, England. His previous residence of Schweksne (the German spelling) resembled the name of "Swesni" given on Blum/Ginsberg's naturalization papers. Now it was indisputable that Leon completely changed his surname. There is no documentation showing Fanny was a Ginsberg, but that could help explain Leon's decision. It also could explain how Joanne's strongest Jewish DNA matches are all Ginsberg descendants.

Leon Ginsberg may have rented a room from the McCradiey's when his wife Fanny was expecting a child. Imagine if she unexpectedly had twins, a boy and a girl. Barely able to support one child, they offered the girl to their landlord for adoption. In 1916 Fanny had another girl named Minnie who in 1939 was a piano teacher still living with her parents in Salford. The 1939 Register notes Minnie's eventual married name: Simon.

Was Fanny a daughter of Avram Ginsberg and his second wife Gena Pakalniski? Their known children were born from 1870 to 1885, so Fanny would have been in the middle of the pack. Perhaps a death or marriage record will turn up to confirm. Meanwhile, we can guess that son David was name after Gena's father, as was Lizzie Chapman's son David, who was born ten years earlier.

Avram and Gena had two sets of twins: Lizzie and Sol was one, and Harry and Rae (Cohen) was the other. If the tendency to have twins is genetic, the possibility is greater that Fanny would have twins David and Florence.

"Avram," the original name of the Biblical Abraham, means "great father." Avram Yosef Ginsberg was known to be a prolific progenitor. If Fanny was his daughter, he had at least ten known children from two marriages. Fanny would be the only one of them known to settle in the UK.

Footnote: The magistrate who presided over Leon Ginsberg's naturalization was a Member of Parliament from the Manchester area named Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill.