Heidi Mathis

About Heidi Mathis

Heidi Mathis is a graduate of the Research Like a Pro with DNA course, and has a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry, with a minor in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University. Her areas of genealogical research are DNA, German, Irish, Dutch, and Swiss Americans mostly in the midwest states and in those countries of origin. She loves using genealogical research as an excuse to read as much history as possible.

The Irish: Endogam-ish

Jan 25, 2023

When you hear the term endogamy, what communities come to mind? French Canadians, Puerto Ricians, Mennonites, Pacific Islanders, and Ashkenazi Jews are common examples. Some of these examples are from island peoples, so what about the Irish? Last time, I discussed the effect of a clearly endogamous community, Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ), on a relatively non-endogamous community, German, within my dad’s match list. My dad has more AJ matches with longer segments (greater than 20 cM),...

Endogamy: Ashkenazi Jewish Case

Jan 18, 2023

As genealogists we want to understand our match lists. We want to identify the matches that will give us the solid clues we need to make progress on our target ancestor’s family tree. Endogamy and its close cousins, pedigree collapse and multiple relationships, complicates that. Diana laid out the definitions in the first blogpost in this series: “Endogamy, Pedigree Collapse, and Multiple Relationships: What’s the Difference and Why Does it Matter?” Nicole wrote about strategies...

Part 9: Pennsylvania Germans: DNA

Apr 1, 2022

In our previous blog posts in this series, we have been learning all about how to research our Pennsylvania German ancestors by discovering the paper trail they have left behind. What about DNA? How useful will it be in helping us with these colonial ancestors? Even though (for most test-takers) colonial ancestors will be beyond the typical 5-6 generations that autosomal DNA is useful, using DNA with your colonial German ancestors may be a key...

Using DNA for Clues with Colonial Ancestors: Quality vs Quantity

Mar 30, 2022

Have you noticed that some of your family lines have many DNA matches and others very little? My dad is seven-eighths 19th-century German, one-sixteenth Pennsylvania German (18th century) and one-sixteenth colonial American/British. I’ve noticed that my dad has many matches on his Pennsylvania German side. However, there are only a few matches on my dad’s 19th-century German ancestor lines. As much as we want our match list to tell us about our ancestors, we have...

Part 1: Pennsylvania Germans: The History Behind Their Focus on Land and Community

Feb 5, 2022

Are you one of the millions of Americans who have a German in your family tree? In an earlier series, Tracing Your 19th Century German Ancestors, I distinguished the largest wave of German immigrants to the U.S. who came in the 19th century from the smaller group who came in the colonial period. Colonial Germans, or as they are better known, the Pennsylvania “Dutch” (a misnomer of Deutsch, or German), make up one of...

Merging DNA and History: American Nations by Colin Woodard: Part 2

Dec 11, 2021

In the last blog post, we learned how the book American Nations provides a framework for understanding U.S. History that can give greater context to the community our individual ancestors were a part of. Our ancestor’s small FAN club connected into a larger network of FAN clubs that can be seen in history and in large genetic networks such as Ancestry Communities or the 2017 study published the scientific journal Nature Communications, “Clustering of 770,000...

Merging DNA and History: American Nations by Colin Woodard – Part 1

Dec 5, 2021

As genealogists, we formulate a hypothesis about our ancestors to make progress in our research. That hypothesis is a lens, a way of organizing the myriad of facts we discover, which we hope will lead us to locate further records, helping us prove or disprove our hypothesis. I like to try to use the same idea to try and understand the history of an ancestor’s time. I want to avoid getting too bogged down in...

Part 6: Tracing Your 19th Century German Ancestors: Using DNA

Jun 11, 2021

In recent years DNA has become an amazing tool for helping solve our genealogical brick walls. For example in Part 5 of this series the fact that Burkhard Schlag’s descendants were fairly close DNA matches to his FAN club’s (i.e. nieces and nephews) descendant’s, provided important clues for tracing Burkhard’s parents. However using DNA with recent German ancestors may be more challenging than with some other communities. Germans may have an advantage with their church...

Part 5: Tracing Your 19th Century German Ancestors – German Archives

Jun 4, 2021

In previous posts of this series, “Tracing Your 19th German Ancestors,” we began searching in America to learn everything possible about our ancestor before researching in Germany. In part 4 we learned steps for reading German-language records. In part 5 we will finally take a virtual trip to Germany. We will first show how to search Archion, the German website for Protestant records, in hopes of finding the baptism record for Burkhard Schlag (our example...

Part 4: Tracing Your 19th Century German Ancestors: Comprehend Enough German

May 30, 2021

In Part 4 we tackle the most daunting part of having a German ancestor and that is understanding their German language records. Many English-speaking researchers feel intimidated at this stage, but please don’t! I only understand the most basic words but have been able to follow the paper trail of many Germans through their American records back into Germany. We are lucky to live in a time where there are many accessible strategies for finding...