Back in 2014, Franca contacted me to say we shared a small segment of DNA with each other on GEDmatch.  Franca was a very distant DNA match to me through her father’s side – possibly 7 or more generations back to our common ancestor, but unfortunately beyond the reaches of my current genealogical paper trail.

At that stage my biogeographical estimates at two different testing companies predicted that I had a small percentage (6%) of Italian/Sardinian ancestry, so the distant connection seemed feasible back then (I’ve since lost that part of my ethnicity estimates as the algorithms and reference populations have been updated several times).

In the months that followed, I tested both of my parents, but unfortunately neither of them shared any DNA with Franca.  Upon examining the DNA segments in a chromosome browser at GEDmatch, it became apparent that the small 7cM segment I shared was actually a false segment, combined from a little bit from my mother and a little bit from my father that overlapped to make it look like a continous segment.

Franca is still searching.

Perhaps Pietro was one of the many thousands of casualties of war.  Whether he survived or not, if anyone should recognise Pietro from his photograph, Franca would dearly love to know – even just so she can place some flowers on his grave.