Paternal Grandmother's Patrilineal Line

Randy at Geneamusings provides his weekly Saturday Night Fun challenge. This week it was to map the patrilineal line of your paternal grandmother, with Y-DNA tests in mind.

Here are the questions he asks, and my answers:

* What was your father's mother's maiden name?

My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Belle Feinstein

* What was your father's mother's father's name?

Her father was Herman Feinstein

* What is your father's mother's father's patrilineal line? That is, his father's father's father's ... back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?

Herman’s father was Selig Dudelsack (who changed his surname upon coming to America), and his father was Samuel Zvi Dudelsack.

* Can you identify male sibling(s) of your father's mother, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.

My grandmother had two brothers. One brother had a daughter, the other brother had a daughter and a son. That son had a daughter and two sons. So there are some living male Feinstein-Dudelsacks who could have a Y-DNA test.

There are also some male Feinstein descendants of Herman’s brother Morris. (His other brothers Harry and Ben seem to have ‘daughtered out’, and his brother Aaron had no children.)

Selig had two male siblings. One, Gershon, remained in Poland. I have no idea what happened to that branch of Dudelsacks. The other, Yidel, came to America and changed his name to Julius Odelson. Julius’s son Samuel had 13 children, including ten sons. (Eight of whom served in WWII and were featured in a newsreel.) There are also some male Odelson-Dudelsacks available for a Y-DNA test. One that could prove scientifically that our branches are related.

If there were interest from both the Feinstein and Odelson branches, I might encourage it. Otherwise, it's not very important to me to find out which haplogroup each of my lines came from. Especially on my father's side where I expect them to be geographically similar. There can always be surprises, but I'm more interested in my maternal lineage DNA since I know there is more diversity there.

My mother sent an mtDNA test in a week or so ago, and perhaps we will be told that she belongs to haplogroups A,B,C,D or X which are the known Native American ones.