How Fathers Across Generations Shaped My DNA and Destiny

Simple curiosity about my ancestors grew into a profound appreciation for all the father figures—known and still being discovered—who shaped the family story that led to me.

As I work my way through the paternal lines of my family tree, I’m currently concentrating on my Swedish line since those records are the most accessible through digitized church records. Each branch I explore reveals men who passed down something essential to the next generation—whether it was courage, skills, wisdom, or simply the determination to build a better life for their children.

David Sten: The Immigrant Builder (1908-1995)

But David brought more than courage to these shores—he brought skilled hands and a builder’s heart. As a carpenter, he understood that creating something lasting required patience, precision, and vision. Whether he framed a house or crafted a piece of furniture, David approached his work with the same methodical care that guided his journey across the Atlantic.

David’s love for building and creating continued beyond his own life. It flowed naturally to his son, whose first job was in construction, helping to build the infrastructure at LaGuardia Airport in New York—quite literally helping to construct the gateway that would welcome future generations of immigrants to America, just as David himself had been welcomed decades earlier.

The builder’s legacy continues to echo through the generations. David’s grandsons inherited that same satisfaction in creating, each finding their own expression of the craft. One has embraced woodworking with particular passion, carrying on the tradition of transforming raw materials into something beautiful and functional, the other, through the use of technology and 3D printing—a direct line from David’s Swedish carpentry tools to modern workshop techniques.

There’s something profound about a legacy you can touch, something that goes beyond stories and photographs. When I see family members working with wood or tackling construction projects, I see David’s hands guiding theirs across more than a century.

George Dubinsky (“Pops”): The Surprising Romantic (1910-1987)

My maternal grandfather, George, taught me that fathers can surprise you decades after you think you know everything about them. For most of my life, I knew “Pops” as the man who read newspapers at the kitchen table, listened to baseball games on the radio, took the subway or walked everywhere, and embodied steady reliability. He was the grandfather who never owned a car in Brooklyn, who walked to the corner store, who represented the careful, practical approach to life.

But George’s most lasting lesson about fatherhood came through the letters he wrote to my grandmother Eva during World War II (See: The Power of Letters in Genealogy). After serving 29 months in the Pacific Theater, he received assignment to Percy Jones Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he helped process wounded veterans returning from overseas. His letters home revealed his deep feelings and unwavering devotion—someone who understood that being a good father and husband meant staying connected to family even when duty called him elsewhere.

George’s story becomes even more remarkable when you consider that he lost both parents early in life—his father died when he was only 2 years old, and his mother when he was 10. His older brother and sister stepped up to raise him, teaching George about family devotion through their actions rather than words. This experience of early loss and sibling care shaped his understanding of what it meant to be dependable for those you love.

Lessons Across Generations

These fathers across the generations each adapted to the challenges of their era while passing something essential forward. David’s courage to leave everything behind for an uncertain future in America required a kind of faith that’s hard to imagine today. George’s ability to serve his country while maintaining deep emotional connections to home through handwritten letters shows a different kind of strength—one that valued both duty and devotion.

As I dig deeper into my Swedish line—currently the most accessible thanks to those meticulous church records—I’m discovering even earlier generations of fathers who made their own kinds of sacrifices and commitments. Swedish records fulfill every genealogist’s dream: detailed household examination records (husförhörslängder), birth and baptismal records, and moving registers that track families across parishes. These documents don’t just give names and dates—they reveal occupations, family relationships, and even notes about character and behavior.

My Irish lines present different challenges. The records grow sparser the further back I go, and I hit that familiar brick wall that so many Irish-American researchers know well. The Slovak lines offer their own unique difficulties—different record-keeping systems, language barriers, and the complex political history of the region that affected which records survived.

Research Strategies for Paternal Lines

Tracing paternal lines brings both advantages and unique challenges that every genealogist needs to understand. Since surnames typically pass from father to son in Western cultures, you have a consistent name to follow through records—but that same advantage can become a problem when you’re dealing with common surnames like Smith, Johnson, or in my case, multiple men named Sven in Swedish records.

Start with What You Have

Successful paternal line research requires building backward methodically from what you know for certain. I started with my grandfather David’s naturalization records and military service documents, which provided not just his information but also his father’s name and birthplace in Sweden. Those Swedish details became the bridge to accessing parish records that stretched back centuries.

For George’s line, the military records from his World War II service provided crucial details about his early life in Pennsylvania. Military records often preserve information you won’t find anywhere else—birthplaces, physical descriptions, and sometimes details about family circumstances.

DNA as a Research Tool

Y-DNA testing has become invaluable for paternal line research, since the Y chromosome passes virtually unchanged from father to son. This proves particularly useful when you hit brick walls in traditional records. I just received the results from the Y-DNA test that my father took, so I’m hoping to confirm some DNA matches soon.

Autosomal DNA testing on platforms like Ancestry can help identify cousins who share the same paternal ancestors, even if they’re researching different branches of the same family tree. These DNA matches often hold different pieces of the puzzle—photos, documents, or oral family stories that complement your own research.

Record-Specific Strategies

Different types of records require different approaches for paternal line research. Census records excel at tracking families decade by decade, but you need to watch for name variations and transcription errors. Immigration records can provide crucial links between the old country and America, but passenger lists often list multiple people with similar names traveling at the same time.

International Records: Challenges and Rewards

Swedish records, as I’ve discovered, rank among the best-preserved and most detailed in the world. The Swedish Lutheran Church kept meticulous records from the 1600s forward, and many have been digitized and made searchable through sites like ArkivDigital. The challenge lies in understanding Swedish naming conventions and reading old handwriting, but the payoff is enormous—you can often trace Swedish families back 300+ years with remarkable detail.

Irish records present a completely different scenario. The devastating loss of most 19th-century census records in the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office means that Irish genealogy often feels like working with half the pieces missing. However, several resources have become game-changers for Irish research:

Church records, when they survive, prove invaluable. Catholic parish registers often go back to the 1700s or early 1800s, though they vary dramatically by location. The Irish government’s digitization efforts have made many more accessible online. Griffith’s Valuation (1847-1864) serves as a substitute census for mid-19th century research, showing landholders and occupiers by townland.

For Slovak research, you’re dealing with the complex political history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the different record-keeping systems that evolved over time. Many Slovak villages have records dating back to the 1600s, but they might appear in Latin, German, Hungarian, or Slovak depending on the period and the administrative authority.

Slovak research offers a key advantage: the villages were often small and stable communities where families stayed for generations. This means that once you locate the right village, you can often trace multiple generations in the same parish records. The challenge comes from Slovak surnames that sometimes changed depending on who kept the records, and immigration records that might show significant variations in spelling.

Reflecting on Fatherhood Through Time

This Father’s Day, as I sort through Swedish church records and plan my upcoming research into Irish and Slovak lines, I’m struck by how much my understanding of fatherhood has deepened through genealogy. These men did more than simply share my DNA with me—they made deliberate choices about how to provide for and protect their families within the constraints of their time and circumstances.

David chose to leave Sweden at 18, trading the familiar for the unknown. George chose to serve his country while maintaining his emotional connection to home through dozens of handwritten letters. Each generation of fathers faced different challenges—economic depression, world wars, immigration policies, changing social expectations—but found their own ways to build something lasting for the next generation.

This research constantly reveals new layers to these stories. Each document I uncover, each DNA match I investigate, each digitized record that becomes available online adds depth to my understanding of what fatherhood meant in different eras and different cultures.

As I prepare to dive into Irish and Slovak records, I know I’ll encounter new challenges and hopefully new insights about the fathers on those sides of my family tree. Genealogical research ensures some stories will remain forever incomplete. But each piece I do find helps me better understand the long chain of decisions and sacrifices that created the family I know today.

This Father’s Day celebrates not just the fathers I knew personally, but honors all the fathers whose stories I’m still uncovering, one record at a time.

Which paternal line presents the biggest challenges in your own family research—and what strategies have you found most helpful for breaking through those brick walls? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

1. Swedish passport photograph of David Sten, 1926, photographer unknown; privately held by Kirsten M. Max, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2025. ↩︎
2. Military photograph of George Dubinsky, ca. 1941-1945, photographer unknown; privately held by Kirsten M. Max, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2025. ↩︎
3. Group photograph of David Sten, George Dubinsky, Kirsten M. Max-Douglas and father, August 1969, Brooklyn, New York, photographer unknown; privately held by Kirsten M. Max, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2025. ↩︎