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The Brother from Chicago
In October my book Clavis Genetica was published. In chapter 18 I discuss cases from my own research, and under 18.4 is the story of two brothers who vanish from all sources after their birth. At the end of that section I described how the story might continue. Yesterday it continued in exactly that way. Two birth certificates and nothing more
Two weeks after Clavis Genetica was published, one of the two vanished brothers from chapter 18 acquired descendants. For me, at least.
In October my book Clavis Genetica was published. In chapter 18 I discuss cases from my own research, and under 18.4 is the story of two brothers who vanish from all sources after their birth. At the end of that section I described how the story might continue. Yesterday it continued in exactly that way.
Two brothers of my maternal great-grandfather appear in the registers with their birth, and after that with nothing at all. No marriage, no death certificate, no note that led anywhere. I searched for decades, in the registers of the surrounding municipalities, in the lists of emigrants and in the immigration lists of the countries that came into consideration. I found nothing. Two people who vanish without a trace like that allow for every explanation, from an early death without a certificate to emigration under a different name. The answer was in their father's tax return
In 2022 the Zeeuws Archief put the Memories van Successie online, the returns for the inheritance tax from the years 1818 to 1927. These list all the heirs to an estate. In the memorie on the estate of my great-great-grandfather, the father of the two, a sister had also signed on behalf of her brothers. The attached powers of attorney gave the reason: one had emigrated to the United States, the other to South Africa.
By then I had already been searching for them for some twenty years. I found them in a document in which I would never have looked for them, because it concerns their father's estate and not their own lives.
What the book says
That made it clear where they had gone, but not what became of them or whether they have descendants. In the book I wrote that DNA can help precisely at this point, and that this case reverses the usual order. Normally a DNA match turns up and you look for the documents that explain it. Here the document had told the DNA what to look for.
A great-grandchild of one of the two brothers would be my third cousin, to use Ancestry's term. Such a match on my mother's side, living in the United States or in South Africa and with the family name in the tree, I could place immediately after the find in Zeeland. Before that find, it would have remained one of the many unexplained lines in my match list.
That was, as of October 2026, a hope with a foundation.
What happened yesterday
Yesterday one of the usual emails from Ancestry arrived: new match, third cousin, no tree linked. I get emails like that often, and usually they lead nowhere. I wrote to her anyway, as I always do with matches of this size.
She replied. Among her ancestors is the brother who emigrated to Chicago. The man I searched for in vain for twenty years, until an inheritance tax return from Zeeland gave him away, has descendants. One of them has had her DNA tested at Ancestry and has now landed in my match list.
At that moment the book had been in the shops for just two weeks.
What you can learn from this
DNA alone would have explained nothing in this case. Before 2022 I would probably have noted a match in America without a linked tree with a shrug and moved on. The archives alone would not have helped either, because they stop the moment someone leaves the country. Only the two together close the gap: the paper says where to look, and the DNA finds the people who live there.
And you need patience. The Memories van Successie were not yet online when I started searching. My family in Chicago may not have taken a DNA test yet back then. Some questions you answer not by searching harder, but by holding on long enough until the source turns up.
What remains open
The brother in South Africa remains a blank spot for now. The starting position is the same: a match on my mother's side with roots in South Africa and the right family name I can now place immediately. Perhaps that email will come one day too.
For the American branch, on the other hand, the work is only just beginning. How did he live in Chicago, whom did he marry, how many descendants are there? I will report on that here as soon as there is something to tell.
Clavis Genetica was published in October 2026 by Editio Vestigia, in Dutch and in German. The case of the two brothers is in section 18.4.
https://www.boekenbestellen.nl/boek/clavis-genetica
The postscript is here as of today.