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Spahr=Witting DNA Matching During May 2025

31/5/2025

Relationship Report
Alve-Selbach

Recently I was able to access DNA matches from my Uncle Ivan Alve's DNA sample. At age 94 he is a generation back from me and his matching is throwing up some new insights. In particular he is providing information about a new line of research; that into his and my Spahr=Witting ancestors in Germany.
As below, Heinz-Georg Selbach is a DNA match with NZ Alves. In particular his 3xgreat grandfather Gerhard Heinrich Spahr is brother to the Catharina Elisabeth Spahr who married Bernard Möllers - the parents of Maria Theresia Alve (nee Möllers) who travelled to A-New Zealand in 1876. Gerhard's and Elisabeth's parents Heinrich Spahr=Adelheid Witting are the most recent common ancestors between the Selbachs and the Alves. Adelheid was born in 1891 (place unknown) and she and Heinrich married in Beckum 1814. Adelheid died 1842 in Beckum.

While to date we know nothing more about Heinrich Spahr other than he fathered (with Adelheid) several children between 1816-1829, Catharina Elisabeth being my, and maybe your, ancestor. This diagram summarises what we know...

Having given thought to this DNA link between Ivan Alve and Heinz-Georg Selbach, I turned my attention to searching for anything more available about Adelheid Witting. My interest was piqued when a DNA match between Ivan and Wolfgang Zeigler indicated some Wittings are probably related.

The mesage that came with the match was that Ivan's MRCA with Wolfgang's Witting line was likely to be Ivan's third or fourth great grandparent. In other words Adelheid Witting's parent or grandparent.

The family tree that came with Wolfgang's DNA information identified these people (see below) as Wilhelm Antonius Witting (1769-1845) and his father Arnold Witting (1723-1797).

Is Adelheid Witting Wilhelm's daughter? Several disqualifiers emerged as I pursued this line of enquiry.

Anna M.M. Tiedeken her mother would have been 14-15 when Adelheid was born!
Existing family trees do not have Adelheid in this family;
These Wittings all have a BDM link to Friesoythe, Cloppenburg, Niedersachsen. Adelheid's marriage (1814) and death (1842) records link her with Beckum far to the south; these towns are almost 200 km apart!

Adelheid is almost certainly not Wilhelm and Anna's daughter.

So I turned to consider Arnold Witting as the possible MRCA. Arnold (b.1723) had at least four other sons than Wilhelm Antonius:

Wilhelm Herman Franziskus Christianus Witting (b.1752-)
Johannes Josephus Witting (b.1754-)
Wilhelm Anton Christian Witting (b.1756-)
Joannes Fridericus Antonius Witting (b.1764-)

There were at least two daughters Gesina and Helena whom I discount because Adelheid's given name was Witting, not the surname of a husband of one of these girls.

For the moment this is where my search pauses until another DNA match with the Wittings, or some other helpful information, is found. As in the above diagram I have Adelheid temporarily attached as a daughter to Joannes F.A. Witting (red). If he is not her father I am reasonably confidant that one of his brothers marked yellow, green or blue is. Once more is known we may also discover the reason for Adelheid marrying in Beckum aged 22-23. A preliminary hunch is that Heinrich Spahr her husband came from Munster, which is about 40 km away....

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Relative Profile: Jürgen Walter Schmidt 1954 -

27/5/2025

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Jürgen Walter Schmidt is a relative on my grandma's Wagner side of the family. The family of Theresa Alve (née Wagner) emigrated from the Hesse region of Germany to Tasmania during 1855. They travelled with several of their Wagner and Nicolai kin seeking a better life in the Antipodes. Theresa made a visit to New Zealand in 1915 and was stranded in New Zealand as first world war heated up; she was not permitted to return home to Woodsdale, Tasmania as dislike of those with German ancestry intensified. By war's end she had met and married my grandfather Henry Alve, and the rest is history.

Relationship Diagram: Terence Alve and Jürgen Schmidt
File Size:	152 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

8th Cousins!

Most recent Common Ancestors (MRCA):
Johann Valentin Höhn (1672-1755) and Maria Margaretha Höhn (née) Wintermeyer (1679-1736)

Jürgen Schmidt

Jürgen Walter Schmidt (born 1954 in Wiesbaden) has lived in Darmstadt since his retirement and has been a member of the local Immanuel Congregation ever since. He was ordained on October 24, 1999, by Superintendent Wolfgang Schillhahn. From 1997 to 2017, he served as vicar, parish vicar, and parish priest of St. Michaelis Congregation in Kassel. Before studying Protestant theology in Oberursel and Mainz from 1992 to 1997, he served as church warden of the Christuskirchen congregation in Wiesbaden for 15 years. As superintendent, he led the Hesse-North church district from 2007 to 2013. Jürgen Schmidt is a trained telephone counselor. He is married and has four adult children. As a pastor emeritus, he regularly conducts substitute services in Darmstadt and Reichelsheim, as well as in other congregations in the Hesse-South church district.

Pastor Schmidt (Darmstadt) celebrated his 25th ordination anniversary on October 24 2024. The now 71-year-old Wiesbaden native was ordained a Lutheran pastor in Kassel, Schmidt is married to Renate, née Bellin. He and his late first wife, Renate, née Wengenroth, have four children.

Jürgen Schmidt is on Facebook and uses the MyHeritage genealogy programme to record his ancestry.

Ten Generations - click image to enlarge

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Relative Profile: Peter-Jörg Nocken 1945 -

7/5/2025

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Click on image to enlarge.

I discovered Peter-Jörg Nocken when I realised he had a link to my Lamsfuβ ancestors in the region of Hückeswagen where my grandfather Carl Wilhelm Alve was born and grew up. He is my 5th cousin as the image indicates.
In March 2023 we had this exchange on the MyHeritage message board,

Hi Peter
Greetings from New Zealand.
I am a descendant of the Carl Wilhelm=Maria Theresia Alve/Alfe/Alfer (Germany) family who emigrated to NZ from Gelsenkirchen in Germany in 1875/6. I note that your 3xgreat grandfather Peter Wilhelm Lamsfuβ was a younger brother to Anna Lamsfuβ.* I further note that you trace your ancestors back to a Christian Lamsfuβ who was born at the end of the 17th century. During 2019 my wife Margaret and I spent some time in Hückeswagen tracing my Alve ancestors many of whom were born in that area. While there I visited the wee village of Lamsfuβ nearby with a couple of American cousins who also have Alve, and therefore Lamsfuβ, ancestry like me...
Terry Alve
Wellington, NZ

Hi Terry,
You are completely right concerníng your/my forefathers in or around Hückeswagen. I myself was born there in 1945. Christian Lamsfuß is the oldest I could find. My grandmother was his 3x great granddaughter, if you understand, what I mean. No, I do not have any information of a family connection to the village of Lamsfuß. In Hückeswagen all church books are transformed into digital lists. Maybe you can find more information there (if you do not have them yet)...
Best wishes
Peter

* Anna Lamsfuβ was Carl (Jnr) Alve's grandmother.

Peter mentions Christian Lamsfuß who was born in the late 1600s. Me married Catharina von der Höhe and together they were the grandparents of Johann Wilhelm Lamsfuß (1759-1811) who married Catharina Gertrudis Kemmering (1763-1829). These two - Johann Wilhelm and Catharina Gertrudis - are Peter's and my most recent common ancestors (MRCA). They seem to have spent their whole lives in and around Hückeswagen. Another view of Peter's ancestry to our MRCA is this, If you click on the image you may get a larger view of this ancestry chart.

Peter-Jörg Nocken

Peter's ancestry chart above also depicts our most recent common ancestors (MRCA) - Lambsfuß=Kemmering - in the context of his wider maternal family tree: I find two things notable about this.

Anna Catharina Kemper nee Bosbach (b.1790 Kürten) is likely a close relative, if not the sister, of Wilhelm Bosbach (b.1792 in Kürten). Wilhelm was Carl Alve's grandfather - the Carl Alve who came to New Zealand in 1876
Peter's grandfather, Peter Johann Scheurer (1879-1916), was killed in France fighting during WW1.

While I do not know a lot about Peter-Jörg, I do know that he was born in Hückeswagen, Germany and I understand he has been a prominent Jurist (Lawyer). A Google search on his name highlights his involvement as a former Vice President of the Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV).
At the age of 80 we might assume he is well into his retirement now.

Terry Alve

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MyHeritage DNA AutoCluster Report Yields A Surprise

4/5/2025

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MARGARET'S (MY WIFE) DNA MATCH AUTOCLUSTER REPORT
Names removed to preserve privacy.

This weekend I have been working on my wife's DNA matches in our MyHeritage online geanealogy platform. A very helpful, graphical and powerful tool inluded is the Autocluster report. Margaret's is above. The coloured squares indicate groups of people who share a common ancestor (or ancestral line) with Margaret. Many of them are 4th or 5th cousins. In this report, 103 relatives have been assigned coloured squares. Usually the most accessible matches are towards the top and correspondingly the least accessible are at the bottom.

However, the second to last (dark blue) cluster in this report. highlighted with a yellow circle. gave me a surprise and yielded a new, confirmed match this weekend.

The blue squares contained the info below in the associated Autocluster spreadsheet...

DATA RELATING TO THE THREE RELATIVES IN CLUSTER 18.
THEY ARE ALL PROBABLY DESCENDED FROM THE SAME ANCESTRAL COUPLE - M3G15!

The figures in red relate to this new confirmed match. In the info available, this match was described as a 3rd or 4th cousin. The figures are:

60.71cM (centimorgans) is the match size in terms of shared DNA - usually around 4th cousin territory.
225 are the number of ancestors available in the family tree attached to this relative.
18 describes the blue cluster - 18th from the top.

Upon closer inspection of this relative's available family tree I eventually recognised a couple who are in Margaret's tree also. Alhough linking relatives were absent from both! When I confirmed this I was able to deduce that the relative in question was a third cousin of Margaret's mother Helen, although their birth years are quite different: Helen - 1917; match person - 1955! In other words the 'match' is Margaret's third cousin once removed - 3C1R.

A corollary to this discovery, on the basis that the three relatives indicated are in the same line, is that most likely they are all descended from the same ancestral couple - McMillan=Fraser. I deduce this on the basis that their matching DNA 44.97, 48.64 and 60.71cM means they are in same match territory.

Whereas I had previously doubted the likelihood of the Autocluster report lower level matches yielding good results, I move forward in my genealogical investigations confident that there are surprises to be found anywhere and everywhere as we closely examine the data and the various reports that help me to analyse it!

Terry Alve

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Alve News

Spahr=Witting DNA Matching During May 2025

Relationship Report
Alve-Selbach

Relative Profile: Jürgen Walter Schmidt 1954 -