Thanks to Donald Wertman, the Association now has a picture of the Daniel Wirthmann fraktur from 1825.
Beginning on 1 January 2022, abstracts and links (when available) to complete obituaries of Wertman descendants and family members are on the Wertman Family Association (WFA) Website. In addition to a summary of the information about an individual, a link is provided to the complete obituary on the appropriate website. Because of copyright requirements, we cannot publish the entire obituary on the WFA website without written permission from the copyright holder for each obituary. Readers are encouraged to follow each link to the complete information which has many more details than the abstract.
A founding member of the Wertman Family Association and its president since the WFA's inception in 2000, Russell Charles Dannecker, "Russ", passed away in his sleep on July 25, 2021. "Russ was a wonderful person and the soul of the WFA... He put so much time and effort into organizing the annual reunions and doing research on the history of the Wertman family. He is going to be greatly missed as a friend and as the WFA President." (Douglas Wertman, WFA Secretary)
The complete obituary for Russ can be found at https://www.currentobituary.com/member/obit/256999 The Wertman Family Association DNA Project has been successful using Y-Chromosome STRs (Short Tandem Repeats) to verify which Wertman men of unknown ancestry are related to George Philip Wertman but not exactly how. In the past few years, genetic genealogists have been using Y-Chromosome SNPs (Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms) to solve such problems. SNPs are mutations that occur randomly and accumulate in the succeeding generations. By careful selection of test subjects, we might be able to identify branches that split when a SNP occurs. Imagine that each man has a book where each page represents his ancestors along his direct male line. His father, his grandfather, his great grandfather and so forth back to the beginning of mankind. Further imagine that certain random pages are blank and those remaining have a letter-number code in place of the name. This is SNP descendancy. Mutations accumulate in succeeding generations adding new mutations as they occur. I previously reported that we have a descendant of Johan Michael, son of George Philip (GPI) who has taken a SNP discovery test (BigY) and has been found to be R-BY164497. This mutation occurred approximately 4000 years ago. Not useful for our project. He also has 33 private variants, SNPs that are specific to our test subject but not yet named because they only occur once in the database. These SNPs are named and placed in the phylogenetic tree when they are also found in future test subjects. New SNPs are being identified by BigY and other tests at an exponential rate. Instead of waiting for matches to come along, we might recruit test subjects suitable for our task. If we were to test a descendant of Jacob, son of GPI, the system will assign him a terminal (most recent) SNP of R-BY164497. He will likely have 25-35 private variants. The results will undergo a manual review after which the SNPs that he shares with the Michael descendant (25-30) will be named and a new block formed. These represent the mutations accumulated over the many years since R-BY164497 arose and that both Michael and Jacob inherited from their father. We can now verify descent from GPI not just a relationship. With some luck, it is also possible that we could identify descent from GPI's sons. A problem arises from the fact that mutations occur randomly. In order for success, one of the remaining private variants in both Jacob and Michael need to have happened in their generation. We have a project member descended from Jacob, who died in 1806 in Northumberland County. Both Michael and Jacob had sons named Jacob of about the same age but they cannot be identified in later years. The “Two Many Jacobs” problem. Unknown Jacob could be either or neither. If we were to test him, there are several possible outcomes. He could form a new block with Jacob or Michael indicating his ancestry from them. He could also match the existing GPI block indicating he is descended from GPI in some other way or no defining SNP occurred in either Jacob or Michael. BigY is somewhat expensive ($380 for new tests, $320 for upgrades) and I am hesitant to use association funds for a project where success is entirely dependent upon a SNP arising in Jacob and Michael's generation. We have no way of knowing until we test at least two more subjects. A solution might be for the association to supply a partial subsidy with the remainder paid by the test subject and perhaps interested donors. Given the cost, it might be difficult to get subjects to pay for their own tests. We might pay the complete cost of the known Jacob descendant test as he is the basis for possible success. We would need to find a suitable subject. We have five in the project but sadly, three are deceased. The other two are not answering emails so their status is unknown. Given the difficulty in sorting out the early Wertman generations due to lack of primary documentation, I view this as a worthy project. The cost and uncertainty involved is something the board and membership might discuss. |
AuthorMembers of the Wertman Family Association Archives
February 2024
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