Another Death by Train, 1937

My maternal grandmother told me many stories of deaths caused by trains.

I found documentation for another one.

Frank Haas died June 6, 1937 after he fell from a train in New Brunswick (Middlesex County, New Jersey).  It took him 36 hours to die.  He was a policeman in Bayonne (Hudson County, New Jersey).  He was the fifth child, born around 1898 in Bayonne, of Samuel Haas (1867-1945) and Mary Zolder (1870-1948).

Injuries included multiple fractured ribs, collapsed right lung, lacerations, fractured skull, and broken spine.  His survival chances were slim.  Regaining consciousness could indicate that Frank was not medicated well for pain.

1930 United States Federal Census
23 West 48th Street, Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey
Frank Haas with wife, Violet (Eckert),
and her children from a prior marriage,
Edith, Florence, and Frank Hoffman

First Cousins, Three Generations

Another close match appeared at FamilyTreeDNA for my maternal uncle.

The common ancestors of these three cousins were Mary Zolder (1870-1948) and Samuel Haas (1867-1945).  They were born in Slovakia, married in 1890 in New York City, and died in Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey.  The three cousins who tested DNA descend from three of Mary and Samuel's eleven children.

The actual relation of this newly-appeared person is first cousin, twice removed.  (Blue in the screenshot below.)  He and my uncle share ten segments* of identical DNA for a total of 198 cM.  The longest segment is 40 cM.

The prior close cousin is a first cousin, once removed.  (Orange in the screenshot below.)  He shares fifteen segments of DNA with my uncle for a total of 355 cM.  The longest segment is 80 cM.

These values are within the expected range for these relations.

What I found remarkable was that none of the shared DNA overlaps; no segments are identical in all three cousins.  The chromosome browser at FamilyTreeDNA does not allow me to compare other people, but the "In Common With" function shows that both cousins match each other, just not where or how much.

* Number of segments over 5 cM.  I did not include segments below 5 cM in this calculation.  FamilyTreeDNA includes these segments in its calculations.

First Close Relative for Haas and Zolder lines

A close match appeared at Family Tree DNA among my maternal uncle's matches.  This is the first close match from his father's side of the family.  The common ancestors are Samuel Haas (1867-1945) and Mary Zolder (1870-1948).

Use of a full name is encouraged at Family Tree DNA.
Unlike 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA testers do not have to "consent to share genomes" to view the matching DNA segments,
while AncestryDNA does not show shared segments.

The only information about this match is his name, email address, and the amount and location of identical DNA.  This was enough to figure out how he is related to my uncle:  they are first cousins, once removed.  This cousin is the generation after my uncle, though my uncle is younger than this cousin.

Family Finder Chromosome Browser

Here is a graph that Family Tree DNA can create for a physical representation of the identical segments shared by relatives, called a Chromosome Browser.  (23andMe also creates such graphs.  AncestryDNA does not.)

The orange lines are the segments shared by my uncle and his first cousin on his mother's side of the family- ODonnell and Preston.  The blue lines are the segments my uncle shares with the first cousin, once removed, from his father's side- Haas and Zolder.

Note that in some areas, such as chromosome 11, that both cousins appear in the same areas.  This is because every person has two pairs of chromosomes numbers 1 through 22.  One came from the mother; the other from the father.  Current DNA analysis does distinguish which side the segment is on.

For distant DNA cousins, usually only one or two segments are shared.  Other people will often share the same spot on a chromosome.  If they do not match each other, this means that one is from the mother's side and the other from the father's side.  (Unless the segments are too small to report, or there is an error in reading the DNA in that spot.)

Samuel Haas and Zolder were from what is now Slovakia.  They spoke German.  There do not seem to be many of their relations in the DNA matches of my uncle.  Family Tree DNA provides and "in common with" tool.  Out of the 400+ matches to my uncle, only three also match his new close paternal cousin.  In comparison, seventy matches are shared by my uncle and his maternal first cousin on their common Irish lines.  Certain populations are more numerous than others in the DNA databases.