Where did Nils Nilsson move to?

Question

My Heritage.com has suggested that a DNA "match" to me is a 4th cousin once-removed, descended from Nils Hansson-528 through Nils Nilsson-6527.  I am trying to figure out where Nils Nilsson moved to when he left Åkerholmen (see Riksarkivet - https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/C0035176_00132 ).  I am still learning my way around the church records, so any help tracking Nils Nilsson would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

How does that work? MyHeritage has to have the whole branch down from Nils Nilsson to your DNA match - or are they just guessing?

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Eva,
Thanks for the answer below.

Yes they need the entire tree.  I have what I know of my family tree online at MyHeritage.  I also have my DNA uploaded at MyHeritage.  Other members of MyHeritage have done the same thing.  When MyHeritage finds a partial match on DNA, they start with each person in the match and move backwards up each tree looking for a common ancestor.  In addition, they use information from other peoples trees where necessary/possible.  MyHeritage is constantly comparing profiles from different trees looking for pairs of profiles that have overlapping information.  If there is "enough" of a match, the pair of profiles are flagged as a "smart match." They use these smart matches to look for paths from one tree to another.  They will also use information from the various databases they have access to.  When they find a potential path to a common relative they flag it as a "theory of family relativity." :-)  So, yes it is partially guess work since smart matches are not 100 percent certain.

In this particular case, it took linking 4 different trees to find a path to a potential  common relative.  Now comes the hard part.  If I want to verify this "theory", I need to find source information that actually confirms the linkages.  Which is why I want to track Nils Nilsson's movements: so I can look for his descendants that MyHeritage says are in the path to my DNA match.

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Thanks for the answer.

I don't "do" DNA, but I did some pretty substantial work on the paper trail for establishing that a couple of guys with different surnames (soldier names) born in 1693 and 1700 were indeed brothers - helping a couple of 8th cousins of mine with their Y-DNA match. That was fun and  interesting.

I don't have a tree at MyHeritage any longer, but I still have a research subscription, so I have been searching some for your Nils Nilsson, not getting very far. I do think there is a false match among their Nils Nilssons up north - there is a Nils Nilsson in Överkalix, which isn't too far away for a young farm hand to move at this time. But this guy seems to have local parents.

I'm pretty distrustful of the SmartMatching of MyHeritage - but still use MyHeritage quite a lot, 1) for ideas that I check up in the church records; 2) when data doctoring to se wherever did they get THAT from

Answer 1

OK: there's a note to the far right saying "fol" (page) and a number, that I first read as 27 (he wasn't there) then, well, has it been changed to 17? (no), well does it say 77? (no). Turns out he is on page 97, down among the farm hands.

Comments

Nils Nilsson is, of course, a common name all over Sweden. I followed him a few steps after he moved out, but lost track - he moved back and forth and the reference from one place to another aren't all that clear. Which was why I tried to catch him up later on by searching at MyHeritage and then trying to backtrack. As said, I wasn't very successful.

For one thing, when he is in the record you have linked - https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/C0035176_00132 - his birth date is pretty clearly 24 March 1824. But in the birth book he is noted as born and baptized 3 April 1824. He was born out of wedlock to Maja Greta Larsdotter, whom you already have as his mother. Since there is no "oäkta" comment in the household record, he was probably premarital.

Birth record: Nederluleå kyrkoarkiv, Födelse- och dopböcker, SE/HLA/1010132/C/6 (1822-1843), bildid: C0034953_00056 https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/C0034953_00056

Having a birth date that varies is a problem for searches.

Answer 2

If you lose track of a person you could try to check out the birth notices of their sibling's children. If they lived relatively close they could sometimes be one of the witnesses at a child's christening (and sometimes the writing of a priest in a neighboring parish might be easier to read).

Comments

Yup. When someone disappears you may have to research the whole family.

In this case I think one might want to check the whole chain provided by MyHeritage first, starting from the other end as close to the living DNA match as possible. I don't trust MH a lot with those Nils Nilssons.

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Thanks to Maggie Anderson and Eva Ekeblad for their assistance.  I am still trying to track "my" Nils Nilsson, but the answers received here have given paths to go down