Everyone in the Snover family knew George A Sznarwakowski had been adopted by Anna and John Sznarwakowski in Detroit in the 1910s. The family story had it that George’s last name had been White before the adoption, although there’s no paperwork I can find anywhere that confirms George’s origins. He married Monica Gorzynski whose family were all Polish, and their children, including their second son, Papa – Robert Francis Snover – grew up in Detroit as Polish-Americans. So where did all that (34%) British ethnicity come from?

My husband Jeffrey and his parents did Ancestry DNA tests last year which led to lots of loud silliness from Jeffrey about how he was more English than I am – I wrote about what my DNA test led to in trying to prove Jeffrey wrong. I didn’t think much about the English ancestry other than assuming his mother’s Dutch heritage probably included a few English people – these two seafaring and trading nations had lots of exchanges over the years, not just providing England with Protestant monarchs after our final tussle with a Catholic one.

Jeffrey’s DNA showed more British ethnicity than his Dad’s, but 34% (plus 6% Scotland/Wales/Ireland) is still a lot for someone with Polish parents…

In addition to Ancestry’s ethnicity estimates based on DNA, shared matches with other test takers (and their family trees) can provide lots of useful information in trying to fill out a family story over generations. After asking Papa’s permission to make his DNA test visible to Ancestry users, we could see how closely he is related to others who’d had a DNA test done. Some matches were not surprising – for example one of Papa’s nieces (his brother George H Sznarwakowski’s daughter) showed up. There were several matches that were relatives of his mother Monica’s family – Gorzynski, Zielinski, Sikorski, etc. all over the family trees.

Recently I decided to divide the DNA matches into Papa’s paternal and maternal lines. What began to emerge was that some of the matches with family trees contained many generations of people with no one at all from Poland. Given what we know about his Mom, Monica Gurzynski’s, family, the trees with no Polish ancestors had to be related to his Dad, George A, and specifically George A’s birthparents.

Even without sorting out who was a maternal or paternal birthparent connection, there was an explanation for “Lord” Jeffrey’s English DNA – in addition to people from various US states, there were immigrants from England, including one prolific branch, the Paull family, from Cornwall, Now Jeffrey’s imagining himself as Poldark…

Using a variation on triangulation – where you take a person’s DNA and that of a known relative and see what DNA matches you both share – I looked through Papa’s DNA matches, starting with those who were closest and those who had made a family tree. It fairly quickly became clear we had two groups of matches: one from the Polish side of the family – although without any known relatives of Monica Gorzynski who’ve been tested, I can’t be certain – and everyone else. Ancestry lets you add colored dots to group DNA matches, so I made a group for Monica’s clan.

In poring over the remaining matches, I started to see some names again and again. I identified three family names, Paull, Gardner and Curtis that pretty consistently showed up (and, as expected, there were no overlaps with any of the matches on Monica’s side). There were a couple of initial surprises where one whole family tree was in Australia and another still in England, but that made more sense as I built up additional groups in the Snover family tree. Both the families I believe represent George A’s birthparents originated in England in the 1820s and settled in the US.

I have reached out to various people with whom Papa matched, hoping there might be a family story about a baby born in 1903 who had to be placed for adoption. So far, nothing has turned up, but there is a second cousin on the Gardner/Curtis side and a 2nd cousin once removed on the Paull side as guides. In the 2nd cousin case, for example, I’m searching for a sibling of the 2nd cousin’s grandparents as a potential birthparent for George A. Sznarwakowski.

I have one young woman from the Gardner/Curtis family who was in Detroit, working as a stenographer (the city directories of the time included what someone did as well as whether they were residing, boarding or taking rooms at their address) in 1903 to 1906. If she turns out to be George A’s birthmother, it would mean I’m looking for a birthfather in the Paull family tree.

Captain Joseph Paull was born in Cornwall, I think in Illogan, in 1822 and along with almost everyone else in the area was a miner (first copper and then tin). As the business declined in Cornwall, miners left in huge numbers for America, Australia and South Africa. The Australian DNA connections make sense after finding out that one of Capt. Paull’s uncles emigrated to Australia with his family.

Because the Cornish mines were very deep, their expertise was much valued as mines were discovered and worked elsewhere. Captain was the term Cornish miners used for the head of a crew – nothing seafaring involved. Capt. Paull came to the US in 1844 and worked in several locations but settled – and married – in Michigan. The photo from the late 1800s from the Michigan Tech University archives shows the environment in which miners worked – a tough, tough line of work.

One of Joseph Paull’s daughters, Sarah Ann Paull, married David Coleman Smyth (a store clerk and later a farmer, originally from Canada) and this couple shows up in the family trees of several of Papa’s DNA matches. I haven’t yet found a likely candidate, but I have been able to rule out quite a few!

When I went to check something on Ancestry after exploring all these matches, imagine my amusement to see this popup appear! I don’t have any more information than I did before the popup, but it does confirm that I’m on the right track in general. Papa’s ethnicity estimate has been updated as shown below – and so has Jeffrey’s. He’s no longer more British than I am – and he’s not happy! I’ll post again as or if I find out more, but even the information so far is fascinating. Papa’s ancestors are still all immigrants, but some a little further back than he knew and some a little further West in Europe than he realized!