DNA and Barrow Lousada genealogy

Our first exposure to DNA technology was when our distant cousin Michael Waas suggested some male-line Lousadas be entered into a study of male-line Sephardic descent. This study was drawn upon in early 2020 by his collaborator Adam Brown when he covered the use of Y-DNA data in Jewish genealogy - paper uploaded here (see also ref 306). Allan and Jeremy Lousada duly proved to be extremely close Y matches with a rare haplotype E-FT 333503 (derived somehow from the North African haplogroup EM35) while Bob Leuzarder (see below) was not a match (his haplotype is R-BY 193173 of the R1b haplogroup which is common among European males). On 21 Oct 2021 Adam Brown advised us of the next closest Lousada Y match - from Finland. This match has 33 out of 37 STRs in common with Allan Lousada; this is 4 genetic steps or about 300 years (9 to 12 generations) from birth of a common ancestor but the genealogical picture is currently inadequate to explain the match other than that a Finnish great-grandfather was 'Mediterranean'. The next closest match is being approached. Adam Brown also, in the online discussion group Sephardic Diaspora during 2019, referred to the Ashkenasi founder effect (see here) and to the likelihood that Randy Schoenberg (who descends like the Barrows from Simon Michael Pressburg) does not descend from the small number of original founders of the Ashkenasi community. But when Ed Barrow got his Y-DNA results back they placed him in the R-Y19847 haplogroup, and things got interesting. For as Michael Waas observed 'I briefly looked over the results and I can tell you that you (Ed) belong to one of our founding Ashkenazi lineages that also has been in the Jewish people probably since the beginning. I have brought Adam Brown in to the discussion for further information and detail. I didn't see any matches necessarily that descend from Simon Michael Pressburg; of course, if you know any direct Y descendants of him, we could test that theory..'. However, Ed's matches point to Myers and Wertheimer ancestors, and these families are present in the circle of Simon Michael Pressburg - see here).

 In the meantime, John Griffiths, descendant of Joseph Barrow, has proved inspirational in raising our interest in DNA. In late 2019 he compared his and Julian Land's autosomal DNA data on GEDmatch. It was exciting to experience this first match but it was insignificant (a single 3.4cM segment match on our 8th chromosome) and much less than might have been expected for 6th cousins (common ancestors Simon Barrow 1709-1802 and Bailah Montefiore 1720-73) but probably illustrates how drastically autosomal DNA can be discarded. Randy Schoenberg provided access to his DNA records, and a number of matches with Randy Schoenberg were found, with one segment match on the 21st chromosome eventually turning out to be interesting in the light of that location appearing to have significance in Baruch Lousada ancestry as one of 4 indicators (see 4th paragraph below). Further work on our Schoenberg matches (see here) shows interesting alternative scenarios including the possibility that Randy's parents may both have Baruch Lousada ancestry. The de Symons connection might give Julian Land a greater link to Randy Schoenberg - that is, the descendants of Simon Barrow of Bath should have an extra connection with Randy Schoenberg compared with those Barrow descendants like John Griffiths who do not have this (additional) connection. However, the situation is not quite so simple (see here). Julian Land and Michael Waas compared their autosomal DNA and as Michael reported on 25 Jan 2020 'we do have some very small 3cM segments shared between us. But who knows if that's from the Portuguese or Ashkenasi sides of our families'. Indeed, we have no certain knowledge of common ancestry - corresponding to our increasing certainty that Abraham Israel Pereira (an ancestor of Michael) did not have a Baruch Lousada mother but rather became by marriage a nephew of Isaac Baruch Lousada #42.

To this may be added what we have learnt from autosomal DNA analysis of some Fischl & Dirsztay descendants. Dena Jenkins with Fischl ancestry found on FamilyTreeDNA that 'hooray we have the same 5th cousin. I found him in your kit and then went on my cousin's kit .. we both have him....If we both have the same 5th cousin we must be related!' However this match with Dena Jenkins may have arisen other than via the Barrows. In the absence of further DNA comparisons from her, this connection has not been further examined, and we have been most fortunate that Scott McDougall's wife, a descendant of Bela de Dirsztay 1861-1921, has had her DNA results uploaded to GEDmatch, and autosomal matches with Julian Land and John Griffiths noticed. We are 7th cousins according to our Barrow/Fischl suggestion, with Simon Barrow's Baruch Lousada mother a common ancestor of her (and Dena Jenkins). A subsequent DNA match supports our inclination here as it not only brings additional an Fischl link, but additional an Pressburg link as well. And luckily we have found a 6-person chromosome 8 match which persuades us that a Lousada/Fischl connection is likely (for example see slide 27 of our  'Fun With Autosomal DNA' and the discussion in the next paragraph).

 In early 2020 Bob Leuzarder, who thought himself to be a probable descendant of Jacob the NY chocolate merchant, introduced some immediate relatives and also a DNA match also from the USA - Jeannine Wegmueller, a descendant of the Luzarders. It was not clear how the Leuzarders (see here) and the Luzarders (see ref 314) related to each other nor to the rest of us. They participated in the work by John Griffiths (on over 200 DNA segments arising from a study group of 11 likely family members; John's latest report #4 is here, and his observations on this are here). A later inspection by Julian Land of the DNA segment matches arising from a subset of 7 of the relatives is reported here with just 2 of 133 of these superficially intriguing matches proving valuable. These 2 matches (on chromosomes 2 and 8) appear to represent remnants of Lousada DNA, and support our hypotheses - namely, both the Portuguese origin of Jacob and our Barrow/Fischl suggestion. Encouraged, we went on to hypothesize a descent of both the Luzarders and Leuzarders from Jacob the NY chocolate merchant. In this, we show Bob and Jeannine as 4th cousins once removed, and Bob ceasing to be a male-line Lousada despite his surname. In 2023, Bob reported a Y DNA match with Ernest Lloyd Luzadder, though this match being of the R haplotype did not match the Baruch Lousada E haplotype. Rather, this match links Bob to the great number of Midwest Lousadas. Nevertheless we considered whether Ernest Lloyd might have Baruch Lousada ancestry transmitted through a female line. We therefore updated our 7 by 7 study to include Bob and Ernest Lloyd (see our 8 by 8 study of July 2023 here). This led us to our 4 Lousada indicator segments:

These 4 indicator segments proved useful in developing the main structure of the genealogy of the USA Lousadas and the placement on the one hand of Ernest Lloyd Luzadder (no indicators) with most of his cousins - near and distant - as outside the Baruch Lousada genealogy, and on the other hand the placement of Bob (3 indicators with that on Cr8 missing), Jeannine (3 indicators with that on Cr21 missing) and a Papacin-Lousada descendant (all 4 indicators) within the Baruch Lousada genealogy. The 4 indicators are also proving useful in considering the Schoenberg matches referred to above, for matches appear at 3 of the indicators (Cr2, Cr8 and Cr21). This shows a Baruch Lousada link and raises the question of whether it is discoverable genealogically. Though useful in our work, the indicators are not straightforward to use - thus, the absence of matches does not imply the tester is not Lousada. Further work with a larger sample of probable Baruch Lousada descendants (a total of 12 as at July 2024) failed to discover any further compelling indicator matches - whether Baruch Lousada or Barrow. And it dampened our enthusiasm for the Cr5 indicator, and also the Cr8 indicator (except when used in conjunction with the Cr2 indicator).

Some methodological points have become apparent: A. Consanguinity was present in Sephardic families such as ours making connections seem closer. Apart from possible unknown earlier cousin-cousin marriages in each line, there was a probable uncle-niece marriage in 1698 in both Jeannine and Bob's ancestry together with 2 cousin-cousin marriages in 1832 and 1743 in Julian's ancestry. Julian and Ed Barrow are 4th cousins and their match may be enhanced due to the latter consanguinity; B. In our 7-relative study we used some nominally unrelated people so that we could contrast cousin-cousin matches with unrelated-unrelated matches. For this work, with a 3cM threshold, we found 'segment threshold size will be adjusted dynamically between 200 and 400 SNPs' whereas in our later 2023 8 by 8 study we found 'segment threshold size will be adjusted dynamically with an average of 200 SNPs. About 2/3 will occur between 185 and 214 SNPs'. The effect of this GEDmatch settings change was to increase the number of matches between cousins as compared with matches between unrelated people, to the point where we got 5% more cousin-cousin single matches than unrelated-unrelated single matches (not fewer, as with the prior GEDmatch settings). This of course demonstrates how many matches of pre-genealogical significance one can get with the 3cM segment threshhold. But with the newer GEDmatch settings the number of cousin-cousin coincident multiple matches increased strongly - by twice the increase in unrelated-unrelated coincident multiple matches (2 times cf 1.4 times). This highlights John Griffiths' insight that multiple coincident matches between relatives should be productive and GEDmatch's change now allows us to see many. Sadly for John's efforts (mentioned above) with the earlier settings, this insight only became fruitful with the newer GEDmatch settings; and C. In late July 2023 GEDmatch suggested we try Q-match as we have small segments - this was a good suggestion (see here Attachment 4) for reliable 3cM matches can be obtained, with the option to look deeper at the risk of getting more matches of pre-genealogical significance.

In Nov 2021 MyHeritage notified Julian Land of an 8*GGF who had been in Recife namely Aaron Querido #3161. This ancestral contribution enters via Baron Moses d'Aguilar whose wife Simha da Fonseca was a great-grandaughter of Aaron Querido as shown on geni.com based on work by Jarrett Ross. However Bob Leuzarder shares a 7cm DNA match with a person who descends from Aaron Querido a great-nephew of the just-mentioned Aaron Querido. This match appears to arise from Esther #1768, one of the Den Haag Louzadas, and perhaps Bob Leuzarder's match is the 1st present-day descendant of the Den Haag Louzadas we have encountered. Esther cannot however have been a direct ancestor of Bob Leuzarder, who has a different descent from Amador de Lousada who was Esther's 2*GGF. Remarkably Bob's sister Christine does not share the match, so the relevant genes were discarded from her DNA in the previous generation. Julian Land does not share the match either, but here the relevant genes may have been lost many generations ago.

On 10 May 2021, FamilyTreeDNA reported an interesting match Julian Land has with 3 successive generations of the Nunes Vaz family. Using the obvious point of linkage evident in Nunes Vaz ancestry namely Simha Henriques Faro #1629, we could not resist suggesting an earlier linkage between the Henriques Faros and the Baruch Lousadas than was deducible from the paper records. This was not entirely impetuous - we had been looking at ways further Henriques Faro links could have arisen. Jarrett Ross on 26 Sep 21 cautioned not only that there may be other Sephardic elements in the match, but that an Ashkenasi element is important as well because his GM (the 1st of the 3 generations referred to) is Ashkenasi! We interpret the matches as follows. Julian's match with the GM has been halved (as judged by the largest segment being halved) by the GM's marriage with a Nunes Vaz descendant. However, because total match was similar in the next generation, the missing Ashkenasi matching genes have been more or less replaced by matching Nunes Vaz genes. That is, there is a Sephardic match with the Nunes Vaz GF roughly comparable to the Ashkenasi match with the GM. In the next generation, the combined match has been largely preserved, probably because the matching DNA has largely survived (as judged by the largest segment not being much reduced), with only a small introduction of new matching DNA. While our original interest was the Sephardic match, the original Ashkenasi match is as close or closer than Julian's other Ashkenasi matches, and we explore it by looking at 3 common Ashkenasi matches but as summarised here, we can see some patterns but nothing of statistical significance.