Maybe the Ross was a Rosenzweig. Private
It upset Moore that her work, intended to give people a sense of ancestral belonging, had left Martin with only disconnection. She continued to work the case. Initially, there was just one lead to pursue—a Jewish man, named Scott Ross, who shared three per cent of Martin’s DNA. But there are more than a quarter of a million Americans with the surname Ross. She built trees for dozens of Scott Rosses, hoping to locate one who could plausibly share DNA with Martin. Years passed. A combination of deduction and intuition led her to a family in New Jersey, but she could not complete their tree. Uncertain that they were the right family, she refrained from reaching out.
As I sat with Moore, she opened up Martin’s DNA profile for the first time in months. Up popped a new genetic match: another Jewish man, Corey Roberts, who also shared about three per cent of Martin’s DNA. It appeared that the two men and Ross all shared a set of great-grandparents. But how?
Roberts had built a rudimentary family tree, and Moore quickly vetted and expanded it, identifying all of his great-grandparents. But none of them seemed to connect to the Rosses. So Moore returned to the Ross family’s remaining brick wall. To break through, she needed a marriage certificate from the New York City municipal archives. Back in New York, I was able to apply for it, and weeks later a copy printed on pale-blue card stock arrived by mail. On a line at the bottom, pounded into the original document by a government typewriter, was the name of a woman who tied the families together. Her surname was Perlmutter.
Randy
