Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who Is Your MRUA?

This week's assignment from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun sounds like a great opportunity to get ideas from other people:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible music, please!):

(1) Who is your MRUA:  your Most Recent Unknown Ancestor?  This is the person with the lowest number on your Pedigree Chart or Ahnentafel List whom you have not identified a last name for, or a first name if you know a surname but not a first name. 

(2) Have you looked at your research files for this unknown person recently?  Why don't you scan them again just to see if there's something you have missed? 

(3) What online or offline resources might you search that might help identify your MRUA?

(4) Tell us about him or her, and your answers to (2) and (3) above, in a blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook or Google+.

I suspect I will have one of the lower numbers for this exercise.

1.  My Most Recent Unknown Ancestor is the father of my paternal grandfather, who is #8 on a standard pedigree chart and Ahnentafel list.  I do not know his first or last name.  In fact, I know nothing about him except that he must have existed.

2.  I have indeed recently looked at my research for this man.  He preys on my mind, in fact.

After several clues over many years made me suspect more and more that my grandfather's father might not have been the man my great-grandmother married, I set about to try to prove it one way or another.  I started out by sending my sister in person to the New Jersey State Archives to find our grandfather's birth record.  She was successful, but the father's name was not listed on the certificate, merely the socially disapproving "OW" (for "out of wedlock").

My grandfather was named Bertram.  My great-grandmother had another out-of-wedlock child three years after her husband died.  That daughter was named Bertolet (no, really, I didn't make that up).  My sister and I both started to wonder if Bertram and Bertolet might have had the same father, someone with "Bert" or something similar as part of his name.  The next time my sister was able to go to the archives, Bertolet's birth and death records were at the top of the list to acquire.  My great-grandmother thwarted us again:  No father's name was included on either record.

Every other record I have found for my grandfather identifies his father's name as Elmer.  Bertolet lived only about six years, so few records exist for her at all.

Now that the standard paper methods had failed me, I turned to DNA.  I was very fortunate in that the only sibling of my grandfather who had surviving children was his brother, who had sons, who had sons.  I tracked down several of my male cousins and convinced one to take a Y-DNA test that I paid for.  I already had my father's Y-DNA test results.  After my cousin's results came in, the inescapable conclusion is that my grandfather and his brother did not have the same father.  Based on the talks I have had with several family members, I am certain that none of the children in the family (my grandfather, his brother, and their two sisters) knew this, so family gossip will not be able to help me either.

My father matches one gentleman in the Family Tree DNA database at 107 markers on his Y-DNA, so I have been pursuing that lead.  The family name there is Mundy.  In addition, a woman contacted my father recently because her husband, also a Mundy, matched my father at about the same number of markers.  So currently I am working on tracing the FTDNA match's family back, and our new contact is doing the same with her husband's family.  For the number of matching markers, the estimated relationship is about 6th cousin, so we have a lot of work to do.  Interestingly, the man on FTDNA identifies as Irish, while the woman's husband's family seems to be English.  The goal is to try to find a man on one or both of these Mundy lines who was in the area of Burlington County, New Jersey or Philadelphia in the summer or fall of 1902.

I have tried searches for Mundys and for variations of "Bert" in the area, but they have had scattershot results at best, as I know nothing about this man other than possibly his last name and part of his first name.  I haven't found anyone named "Bert" Mundy in the area, that's for sure.

3.  I need to do more work on researching the Mundy family identified by the Y-DNA match on FTDNA.  I've only gone back three generations so far, and I need to go further back and then bring all those lines forward, tracking every man.

I have had both of my surviving aunts, who along with my father are my grandfather's children, do DNA tests.  I need to transfer their results to GEDMatch to help the research along.  Based on what I have seen for matches so far, however, I am beginning to suspect that this great-grandfather might not have had any other children, or at least none who had surviving progeny.  Neither my father nor my aunts have any matches closer than 3rd cousin in their autosomal results.

I'm also considering ponying up the fee on GEDMatch to try the Lazarus tool.  I now have DNA results for my father, my aunts, my brother, my sister, and myself.  That might be enough to give me some kind of credible profile for this mystery man.

If anyone has other suggestions on how I can try to learn who my great-grandfather was, I will be happy to hear them!