Hint for a mutual surname in tiny tree

[brigidmac]

Someone with an unusual russian surname on her tree has a 59cm DNA match + comes up as shared match to several new people.

But she only has 1 person on her tree (her father)

It's been annoying me for years but today I happened to notice that her tree
Contained a record so I looked + it was a 1930 census with the man living with named russian born parents and a brother

From there I was able to look for his parents on other trees and have found potential links to my Latvian family

I.ll have to see if other tiny trees have records .am grateful that this person linked a name and a record to their DNA

[brigidmac]

I have thru lines on Ancestry DNA
to this person's second cousins now as I have added missing link

Has anyone else had success doing this .?.

[Galium]

Not quite the same - but I have a match which looked quite good, linking with some others that I couldn't place, with a tree of only three people.
It took me a while to realise that the match's user name is a small village in Wales which, when I googled it along with the only surname on the tree led to a short biography which helped me to discover how they fitted into my tree, and how they linked with some of the shared matches.

Sometimes it pays to think outside the box.

[brigidmac]

Wow that's a great thinking outside the box technique Valium

+ It works for my Jewish ancestors too one branch of the original branch who came from Courland Latvia had surname Kurland/courland
One LANDSMAN family  became LONDON but I think that was more to do with just anglicised name

I know Of a name like JURELSCH becoming YORKSHIRE

+ One MENDELSON descendant said her grandfather wanted an English sounding name beginning with M

& Chose MALVERN because he.d seen a poster of the MALVERN hills and thought they looked pretty

My Scottish ancestors from pre 1800 often had surnames of their place of origins at the top of my tree is Janet RENFREW  guess where she came from !