Belarus-Lida Region and Prokopowicz surname Family Tree DNA projects

One benefit of testing with Family Tree DNA is that it hosts thousands of projects—7,620 at last count, devoted to surnames and geographic areas large and small. Joining a project allows you to view your test results in relation to those of people with whom you may share some factor in common, such as ancestry in the same part of the globe. By putting your results in a bigger context, a DNA project can offer insight into your origins that you might not otherwise discover. Quite simply, it can help you figure out how and where you fit in.

A number of excellent Family Tree DNA projects focus on eastern European ancestry. Some broadly relate to countries of origin. Some concentrate on dynasties, nobility lines, or clans; others, on ethnicities. Some are quite large: the Polish project currently has 3,330 members. All projects are overseen by volunteer administrators. These projects are well worth joining. Through my own mtDNA test results, I joined the Cossack DNA, Lithuanian DNA, Lituania Propria, Polish, RussiaDNA, and Russia-Slavic DNA projects.

And because I have a particular interest in the Lida region and in the Prokopowicz surname, I submitted proposals to FTDNA to create projects focusing on those two themes.

About the Belarus-Lida Region geographic project

My justification for the Belarus-Lida Region project was that this area has had a complicated history, evident in the ever-changing national borders that have encompassed it; and that its population has similarly comprised several distinct ethnic groups. Belarus-Lida Region is a dual geographic project, meaning that it accommodates both Y-DNA and mtDNA test results. The goals are twofold:

To help members identify a common male ancestor and/or a common female ancestor in the Lida region.
To help identify relationships between family branches that in recent generations may have become separated or estranged due to emigration, war, deportation, resettlement, etc. These upheavals have scattered people with Lida roots throughout the world.

About the Prokopowicz project

My original rationale for the Prokopowicz surname project was that this was a common patronymic surname in my particular region of interest, the lands of the onetime Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—today's Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. It is also common in Ukraine, Russia, and other Slavic nations; variant spellings of Prokopowicz appear throughout eastern and central Europe. And emigration, war, deportation, and resettlement have carried it worldwide, far from its families' places of origin.

Because a primary goal of this project is to help determine which families bearing this surname may share a common male ancestor at some point in the past, Y-DNA testing is required for membership.

Both the Belarus-Lida Region and the Prokopowicz projects are small. I welcome and encourage anyone with relevant ancestry to join them.

My grandparents' haplogroups: N1c1 & R1a1 Y-DNA; T2b & H27 mtDNA

There is a lot to be said about all the DNA tests my family members and I have taken over the past three years. I am certain of this from all the probing questions and insightful answers that other people post daily on the DNA-Newbie list. They are analyzing shared cMs, mulling relationship ranges, discussing STRs and SNPs …

Mutations and matches and markers, oh my!

I'm clueless.

Not entirely clueless. I kinda sorta get the really basic basics here, just like I kinda sorta get the precession of the equinoxes, and I am committed to learning as much as my boggled little right brain can hold because DNA completely fascinates me. I want to understand as much as I possibly can about what these tests reveal about my family's past.

I also want to share some of our FamilyTreeDNA findings, and expand upon my prior post's quick list identifying my two grandfathers' Y-DNA haplogroups and my two grandmothers' mtDNA haplogroups. It may seem like I'm overthinking things, but I've been a bit hung up on how to do this. Obviously, I'm ill-equipped to offer a presentation that is even remotely scientific. (I prefer not to make a complete fool of myself on The Internet, Where Everything You Post Remains Online Forever.)

If you want to know more about how, when, and where any of our particular haplogroups fit into tens of thousands of years of human migration, you would do well do simply Google them, for starters; there are many resources online.

I'm keeping it simple: an overview of the tests, a few screen shots, a couple of observations, a couple of disclaimers, and some relevant names, dates, and places from my family tree. All of the villages and parishes referred to are in the Lida region of western Belarus. Szczuczyn is about 30 miles east of Grodno; Radun is about 60 miles farther east, and about 45 miles south of Vilnius, Lithuania. Unlike the men, the women take on new surnames in each generation as the result of marriage. I mention those names in my eternal hope of connecting with long-lost relatives through this blog.

Paternal ancestry

Grandfather Julian Prokopowicz — Y-DNA haplogroup N1c1 (also known as N-M231)

I know nothing about my paternal great-grandfather, Kazimierz Prokopowicz. After 17 years of research, I have not found even one single record documenting his life. No surprise, then, that I have been so interested in gleaning what information I can from the Y-DNA he passed down to his male descendants. Thanks to my paternal uncle's willingness to be tested, I have learned at least that my paternal Prokopowicz men belong to haplogroup N1c1, which is widely found in northern Europe among the western Siberian Yakuts and Nenets, the Finnic and Baltic peoples, the Saami, and some Russians.

The surnames I see among my uncle's 230 Y-DNA matches are overwhelmingly Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Finnish, and Latvian. The closest matches report geographic roots in Lithuania, sweeping southward from Vilnius into the Lida region of Belarus. Some bear surnames that I recognize from the parish records of Radun (where my grandfather was born) and Nacza and Ejszyszki (where several Prokopowicz families are documented from the late 1700s on).

These matches are not recent; the likelihood of sharing a common male ancestor within the last 4 generations is about 61 percent; within the last 8 generations, about 85 percent; and within 12 generations, about 94 percent. Estimating 4 generations per century, those percentages suggest a likelihood of connection sometime in the 1700s.

At 24 generations, or 600 years, the probability of connection jumps to 99.66 percent. Does this mean that my paternal Prokopowicz ancestor was living somewhere in the Wilno/Vilnius region circa 1400? Could it mean that he was part of a tribe or group that migrated there in that time frame? Could it mean something else entirely? I don't know. I would dearly love to test some male Prokopowiczes with roots in the village of Poleckiszki or okolica Mongieliszki, two locations (both on the Lithuania-Belarus border) where I've found numerous Prokopowicz records. Or Turgeliai, Lithuania (in Polish, Turgiele), another Prokopowicz village area that I have not researched at all.

Because the text box accompanying the white push-pin icon representing my uncle would have covered most of Lithuania and Latvia on the map of his matches, I removed it. Imagine it in the northwest corner of Belarus.

Grandmother Anna Blaszko — mtDNA haplogroup T2b

While Y-DNA can suggest relationships within a few hundred years, mitochondrial DNA is more an indication of "deep ancestry" and human migration over thousands of years. It lends itself to "Daughters of Eve" analysis more than to hopes of discovering a cousin (though the latter is possible too). The main insight I have gained from my family's two mtDNA tests is that my grandmothers were descended from two different tribes of women. (If you had known my grandmothers, that would actually come as no surprise.)

Since it was administered in April 2013, the FTDNA mtHVR2toMega test (HVR1, HVR2, Coding Region) has yielded 228 matches for my paternal grandmother's T2b mitochondrial DNA. There are 45 matches at zero steps removed, 67 at 1 step (a prominent African American genealogist and university professor among them), 70 at 2 steps, and 46 at 3 steps removed. Frankly, I don't know what "steps" mean (some sort of mutations, maybe).

At any rate, among the 27 closest matches who identified their maternal line's country of origin, 6 claim Germany, 4 Ireland, 3 each Finland and England, 2 Switzerland, and 1 each Austria, Estonia, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US. The screen shot (at right) of the closest matches shows my grandmother's maternal line with a white marker and her few exact matches in red. She appears alone in western Belarus, but that may be the result of fewer people with roots there having done the mtDNA test.

For the record, in my father's mother's family, these are my direct ancestors:
grandmother — Anna Blaszko, born 1895 in Skladance, Radun parish
great-grandmother — Teresa Bowszys, born 1866 in Skladance, Radun parish
great-great-grandmother — Anna Tumielewicz, born circa 1835 in Narkuny, Żyrmuny parish
great-great-great-grandmother — Katarzyna Komięcz, born circa 1806, probably in Gudele, Żyrmuny parish

Maternal ancestry

Grandfather Aleksandr Prokopowicz — Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1 (also known as R-SRY10831.2)

I'm very fortunate and thankful that my cousin agreed to have his Y-DNA tested. He is the only living direct male descendant of my maternal grandfather. Lacking my cousin's willingness, I would have had to seek out a male descendant of one of my great-grandfather Kazimierz's brothers—not an impossible alternative, and one that I hope to pursue in the future, but it seems optimal to test as close to home as possible.

Compared to my other grandparents' same-sex haplogroup tests, this Y-DNA test has a staggering number of results—931. However, only 5 of them match at more than the 12-marker level, and even those are remote. As I interpret the results, any relationship between this Prokopowicz line and its 931 matches is probably no more recent than the year 1400.

My cousin's test results perhaps serve as an example of the fact that R1a1 is a very large, very common Y-DNA haplogroup, which spread from Eurasia to central Europe and Scandinavia thousands of years ago. The countries with the highest frequency of representation in my cousin's matches are Norway, the central European and southern Slavic countries, and Pakistan.

The screen shot shows the countries of origin claimed by men whose Y-DNA test results most closely match my cousin's. A white push-pin icon, barely visible amid the red and orange icons that cover the map of Europe, represents him, and our Prokopowicz line.

I can't elaborate any further here without stepping into scientific territory where I really don't belong. A graphic labeled "R1a1 Clades (by SNP markers)" on the FTDNA R1a1 and Subclades Y-DNA Project-Background page very clearly illustrates the migration time line of the SNP tree (basically, changes in the DNA sequence at specific locations). To see where the Prokopowiczes fit it, trace the green Central and Eastern Europe/Western Asia Z280 section to the far right column tagged Balts that ends in Z661. If I understand my cousin's SNP test results correctly, the Prokopowiczes represent some subsequent mutation there, yet to be identified.

In my mother's father's family, these are my direct male ancestors:
grandfather — Aleksandr Prokopowicz, born 1878 in Kozarezy, Iszczolna parish
great-grandfather — Kazimierz Prokopowicz, born 1845 in Kozarezy, Iszczolna parish
great-great-grandfather — Stefan Prokopowicz, born 1811 in Kozarezy, Iszczolna parish
great-great-great-grandfather — Ludwik Prokopowicz, born circa 1765, probably in Iszczolna parish
great-great-great-great-grandfather — Stefan Prokopowicz, born circa 1730, probably in Iszczolna parish

My research documenting the descendants of my great-great-great-great-grandfather Stefan Prokopowicz is fairly extensive. Each generation was blessed with sons. It would be wonderful to make contact with any current bearers of the Prokopowicz Y-DNA.

Grandmother Stefania Ruscik — mtDNA haplogroup H27

H27 is a very small (very, very small!), fairly recently identified group. My FTDNA mtHVR2toMega test has yielded just 54 results since 2010. Only one match is zero steps removed, hinting vaguely at a possible common maternal ancestor within the time frame of verifiable, paper-trail research. That tester knows little of her maternal ancestry except that her grandmother was from Poland.

The other 53 matches, 1-3 steps removed, comprise a cluster in eastern England, 3 in Finland, and 1-2 each in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Norway, Sweden, and Turkey. Looking at continental Europe (excluding Scandinavia), my grandmother's line is actually the farthest east. How the heck did it end up there?!?

These are my direct maternal ancestors:

grandmother — Stefania Ruscik, born 1882 in Gierniki, Szczuczyn parish
great-grandmother — Emilia Nowogrodzki, born 1853 in Kozly, Wasiliszki parish
great-great-grandmother — Krystyna Sobol, born 1821 in Gierniki, Szczuczyn parish
great-great-great-grandmother — Anna Staniejko, born 1799 in Janczuki, Szczuczyn parish
great-great-great-great-grandmother — Theresia Waszczynska, born 1756 in Janczuki, Szczuczyn parish
great-great-great-great-great-grandmother —Anna ?, born probably circa 1730, probably in Szczuczyn parish (or possibly elsewhere)

As the map below illustrates, my maternal H27 mtDNA has only one exact match, somewhere in Poland.

Exactly how Polish is my DNA?

My grandparents, and their parents before them, and their parents before them, all lived in Wilno. In their time, Wilno was one of the western provinces of the Russian Empire; earlier, Wilno was the eastern stronghold of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. For hundreds of years, at least, the Wilno region was a melting pot of ethnicities—Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, Ruthenian, Tatar, German, Scot, and Italian (not to mention possible Swedish infusion from the devastating Great Northern Wars).

When my grandparents emigrated from Wilno before World War I, they settled in a sizable Polish community in Worcester, Massachusetts. They were members of its Roman Catholic parish of Our Lady of Częstochowa. My mother and her siblings were educated at the parish's St. Mary's School, whose bilingual curriculum steeped them in Polish literature, history, and music. Although the intensive half-day of Polish studies had been phased out by the 1950s, when I received my diploma from St. Mary's High School in the mid-1960s, I was graduated from New England's only coeducational Polish Catholic high school.

My family spoke Polish at home. We ate Polish food—my father's homemade kiełbasa, my mother's gołąbki. Daddy listened to Johnny Libera's polka program on the radio every weekend, and Mom prayed I would marry "a nice Polish boy." (Note: her prayers were not answered. Szkoda!)

It never occurred to me that I was anything less than 100 percent Polish. In 1996, I began researching and documenting my Polish ancestry. In 2002, I stepped off the paper trail to do my first mitochondrial DNA test; Oxford Ancestors identified me as mtDNA H, the most common European maternal haplogroup. Unfazed by the fact that H encompassed about 40 percent of the continent's female descendants, I ordered a "Polish DNA Inside" T-shirt from Café Press.

Lost in a maze of haplogroups

But I began reading books and more books about DNA. I lacked the scientific background to understand much, but the topic intrigued me. My mother had passed mtDNA H along to me, but what did my other ancestral lines contribute to my genetic makeup? What did I receive from my father and my grandfathers, whose Y-DNA I, as a woman, could not inherit? How did my paternal grandmother fit into the scheme of things? What did I share with my cousins? What did I hand down to my children?

Testing had grown increasingly sophisticated in the years since my Oxford Ancestors test. As a woman, I could hope for more detail about my mtDNA heritage through newer, more refined tests. As a woman, I could not be tested to learn my father's Y-DNA haplogroup. I could, however, gain some insight into my ancestry beyond direct male and direct female lines by means of autosomal testing—and perhaps discover some new cousins in the process.

After doing considerable research on genetic testing services, I decided to try Family Tree DNA. (Since then, I have also used 23andMe. I am equally satisfied with both companies, which are recognized leaders in the field.) What I particularly liked about Family Tree DNA was its plethora of projects—geographic, ethnic, haplogroup, surname—that seemed designed to facilitate exploring how and where any tester's ancestry might fit into the big picture of human evolution and migration.

Who to test, and why

I had a goal: to identify the Y-DNA haplogroups of my two grandfathers, and the mtDNA haplogroups of both of my grandmothers (of course, I already knew my maternal grandmother's). The Y-DNA results loomed especially large. Both my father and my mother were born into Prokopowicz families, as I mentioned in one of my early blog posts. My paternal grandfather, Julian Prokopowicz (1895-1951), hailed from Radun parish in the eastern Lida region. My maternal grandfather, Aleksandr Prokopowicz (1878-1939), was from Iszczolna parish, a scant 30 miles to the west. Did Julian and Aleksandr share a common male ancestor at some point in the distant past? No amount of paper-trail research could ascertain that. Only Y-DNA testing could answer the question.

My father and three of his four younger brothers had already died. Only his youngest brother, my one surviving uncle, could provide a genetic sample of my grandfather Julian's Y-DNA as well as my paternal grandmother Anna's mtDNA. (Men inherit their mother's mtDNA but do not pass it along to their children.) I was very apprehensive about asking my uncle to do the testing; he is a very private person. To my grateful delight and relief, he graciously agreed.

I should note that, had my uncle not been willing and available, other testing options were possible in my extended family: five male cousins (my paternal uncles' sons) and one aunt (my father's one surviving sister). One male cousin and one aunt could have provided the haplogroup information I sought, but testing one person instead of two seemed optimal (read: simpler and cheaper).

My mother's family also posed a challenge. Of my mom's three brothers, only one had fathered a son—my cousin and genealogy mentor, who died in 2000, survived by two daughters and one son. That son, my first cousin once removed, was the only living male Prokopowicz descendant of my grandfather Aleksandr, the only possible source of a Y-DNA sample. Without hesitation, and happy to further the family research his father had launched back in the 1980s, he too agreed to testing.

Even though I already knew my maternal grandmother Stefania was haplogroup H, I expected that more current mtDNA testing might augment the information I received in 2002.

With all four grandparents represented, I ordered our kits from Family Tree DNA in March 2010.

The Prokopowicz Question, answered at last

Four months later, the Prokopowicz question was unequivocally answered: Julian Prokopowicz and Aleksandr Prokopowicz did not share a common male ancestor. They did not even share a haplogroup. They were descended from two distinct tribes that migrated to Wilno from different parts of Eurasia sometime during the past few hundreds or thousands of years.

The same proved true of my two grandmothers, who descended from different "daughters of Eve," as human genetics professor Brian Sykes termed the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups in his groundbreaking 2001 book.

Over the past three years, additional tests on our family's DNA samples have added more specificity to the initial findings. For Y-DNA, we advanced from 12 to 67 markers and added on SNP tests. For mtDNA, as new tests became available, we progressed to FTDNA's mtDNAPlus and mtHVR2toMega. To explore our other ancestral lines, we used Family Finder autosomal tests; I have used 23andMe for that same purpose.

My grandparents' haplogroups

What were my grandparents' same-sex haplogroups? Here is what my family's DNA tests revealed:

Paternal grandfather Julian Prokopowicz (via my uncle's test) — N1c1, also described as N-M231 Y-DNA
Paternal grandmother Anna Blaszko (via my uncle's test) — T2b mtDNA
Maternal grandfather Aleksandr Prokopowicz (via my cousin's test) — R1a1, also described as R-SRY10831.2 Y-DNA
Maternal grandmother Stefania Ruscik (via my test) — H27 mtDNA

It's my hope to find appropriate long-lost cousins who might be tested for my grandparents' other ancestral lines: a female descendant of Julian's mother, Anna Bogdan; a male descendant of Anna's father, Adam Blaszko; a female descendant of Aleksandr's mother, Paulina Zubrzycki; and a male descendant of Stefania's father, Antoni Ruscik. I am curious about whether testing those family lines would reveal even more diversity in my heritage.

I need a new T-shirt!

That would be in line with the haplogroups observed to date in the Family Tree DNA Belarus-Lida Region project http://www.familytreedna.com/public/Belarus_Lida_Region/ that I founded a couple years ago. Y-DNA haplogroups represented there are E1b1b1, I1, J2, N1c1, R1a1a, and R1b1a2. Mitochondrial haplogroups are H, H23, H27, I, J1c1, K, N1b1e, R0a, T2, T2b, T2e, U, U7, and W6-C16192T. The project members' range of haplogroups—to some extent, at least—reflects the ethnic mix that characterized Wilno for so many centuries.

It has been eye-opening to me to consider that I am, in effect, a one-person melting pot—a genetic synthesis of at least a few of the disparate human tribes that found their way to Wilno over hundreds or thousands of years. DNA testing answered my first, rather simple question: yes, I am descended from two unrelated Prokopowicz families. But it has raised some other questions and issues, not the least of which is this: I need a new T-shirt, one that correctly proclaims "More than Polish DNA Inside."

Exploring human evolution and migration through DNA is genealogy writ large

I read a lot of nonfiction related in one way or another to genealogy and my personal family research.  And I watch just about anything on television that connects to genealogy or my ancestral roots.  Over the years, though, one book and one TV documentary have impacted me more than all the rest combined: The Seven Daughters of Eve by geneticist Bryan Sykes (2001) and  Journey of Man, featuring geneticist Spencer Wells (PBS/National Geographic, 2003).  Sykes and Wells are leading world authorities on DNA research.

The Seven Daughters of Eve focuses on mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, which is passed down matrilineally—from a woman to her daughter, to her daughter, to her daughter, generation after generation.  Journey of Man traces Y-DNA, which is similarly passed down, patrilineally, from a man to his son, to his son, to his son, and so on.  Both of these ground-breaking works look at the big picture: the evolution of the human species over thousands of years, through migration out of Africa and across the planet.  Genealogy writ large.

I am not going to go into detail here about the substance of either Seven Daughters or Journey.  Much has been written about both of them.  When I Googled the titles earlier today, I noticed, for instance, that Journey of Man is available for viewing (in 13 segments) on YouTube.

There is a plethora of material available now about DNA research and its significance for genealogy.  I've read a number of the popular books, and I've attended numerous workshops on this topic.  I am not by nature scientifically inclined, so much of the material seems dry and does little to increase my understanding.  The Seven Daughters of Eve and Journey of Man, though, captivated me.

There is a mythic quality about The Seven Daughters of Eve that engages me.  Sykes's research (later expanded upon) led him to conclude that people of native European descent trace their ancestry back to one or another of seven women whose mtDNA mutated from their mother's.  These seven mutations occurred thousands of years apart, between 45,000 and 10,000 years ago.  Each was a turning point that created a new haplogroup of mitochondrial DNA. 

Sykes envisions these seven women as "clan mothers."  He christens them each with names—Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine, and Jasmine—and describes their probable lives and times in their respective regions of Europe and the Middle East.  This is science as Susan Seddon Boulet might have painted it.  I can imagine the Seven Daughters' stories being told during ceremonies deep in the caves of Lascaux with flute music echoing from yet-deeper caverns.  But that's just me and, as I have to emphasize, I'm no scientist.

If The Seven Daughters of Eve takes you into the dreamtime, Journey of Man lurches you onto the frozen tundra with a backpack of test kits.  Spencer Wells is a high-energy genius who seems like he'd be equally comfortable analyzing lab results or summiting K2.  A book was developed from this documentary, but this story is such an amazing adventure, and certainly so visual, that this just might be one of those rare times when the film trumps the book. 

"Blood was the time machine, and we were the time travelers," Wells says as he explains the research that took him visiting isolated tribes and populations all over the planet to trace the Y chromosome and explore how everyone—everyone—is related.  One of my favorite scenes is in Kazakhstan, which you can see in Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Part 9 of 13) on YouTube.  This documentary rocks.

Bryan Sykes and Spencer Wells, more than anyone else, brought DNA and genetics to life for me.  Their work made traditional paper-trail genealogy seem like a very tiny, limited view of the real story—the really great story of human evolution and migration.  They linked my passion for genealogy with my lifelong interest in anthropology.  They opened doors that beckoned me inside, ready to swab my mouth for saliva (thankfully, no blood samples required!) and learn how my ancestors and I fit into this amazing journey of man and woman across Planet Earth.  And what I've learned from my family's DNA tests intrigues me even more.  It's our own journey, evolution and migration writ small.