| Updates are listed in reverse chronological order (most recent first).
For more information about each family mentioned here, please see the Palevsky: A Genealogical Study website at http://www.research.palevsky.net
4/23/2008: Results are in for the Itzko Paler family. We tested the Paler family to find out if they could be related to the Palevsky families. Unfortunately, this Paler family does not match any of the Palevsky families tested so far, but we hope to identify additional Paler families who might match the Itzko Paler family.
4/11/2008: We now have 12-marker results for the Yehudah family, which matches our Yaakov Tzvi, Gershon, Hershel and Shmuel Lazar families! The Yehudah family are descendants of the Vilna Gaon, and Yehudah was reputed to be a brother to Rabbi Moshe Aaron Polier of Kobrin. Unfortunately, we have yet to identify a direct male descendant of Rabbi Moshe, so we're currently unable to prove or disprove this theory via DNA testing.
9/19/2007: Results for the Gershon2 family have been received and are a match for the original Gershon family, as well as the Yaakov Tzvi, Hershel and Shmuel Lazar families. It's very likely that Gershon and Gershon2 are actually the same person, but we have yet to confirm that through traditional genealogical research, so we're treating them as two different families for now.
6/6/2007: Results have been received for the Yaakov Palewsky (Paley) family. This family doesn't match any other Palevsky families tested so far. There's an oral history that this family adopted the Palewsky (Palevsky) surname to avoid conscription into the Russian military, so the lack of DNA match with other Palevsky families appears to corroborate this.
5/28/2007: Since last year, we've also tested the Menachem Mendel and Yaakov Azriel Zelig families. These families match each other, but do not match the first 4 families tested. So we now have two distinct Palevsky lines! Traditional genealogy research is still ongoing, on both lines.
4/4/2006: Results for the Yaakov Tzvi family are finally in and are a match! All 4 families who have tested so far were perfect matches. We have new cousins! The difficult part will be figuring out exactly how the families are connected -- that will need to be done with traditional genealogical research and we'll need to find records in the archives in Belarus.
3/1/2006: 25-marker results for the Gershon family are in and are an exact match with the Hershel family's results. The Yaakov Tzvi results probably won't be in for another few weeks, apparently there was a problem with the test and they're re-running it.
2/20/2006: 37-marker results for the Hershel family have arrived! The results of these additional markers further solidify the connection between the Palevsky family and several families with different surnames, as described in the 1/17/2006 update below. We still expect to receive 25-marker results for the Gershon and Yaakov Tvzi families by the end of this month.
2/13/2006: 12-marker results have arrived for the Gershon family and, as expected, they match the two families already tested. Results of markers 13-25 for the Gershon family should be available in a few weeks. We also have a 4th family whose test results should become available over the next few weeks.
1/17/2006: Our first set of 25-marker results just arrived! We have also learned that our first two families match a very large group of Jewish families with many different surnames, from all over Eastern Europe, and there's an active project studying this "cluster" of families. The Palevsky surname has only been in use for about 200 years, while it's estimated that we share a common ancestor with these other families up to ~500 years ago, hence the many different surnames.
1/3/2006: Two sets of 12-marker results are now in and they're a match! The next two sets of results should be in around mid-February and we're still working to add more families to the project.
12/23/2005: We now have four families participating in the project and one set of results was received today! You can see the results below, though they won't mean too much until we have more results to compare them to. The next set of results should be in right around the New Year, so stay tuned!
12/15/2005: Three families have joined the project and we expect the first set of results by the end of December. One other family will be ordering their test kit any day now. We look forward to the participation of other families -- the more participation we have, the more useful the results will be!
Elise
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