The Sharmers

since 1774

Share a memory

Where We Came From

Four family lines meet in Joseph and Ruby Sharmer’s children: a sailor’s son from Holstein, an Irish girl from Massachusetts, and two Texas families who went west to California. This map follows them, and Laurel’s DNA shows how they still add up.

Map of the Sharmer family’s moves from Elmshorn, Holstein, and Quincy, Massachusetts, to Sidney, Nebraska, and California, with Laurel Sharmer’s DNA ancestry estimate.
Click the map to see it full size.

The journeys

  • Joseph Sharmer I (his page) was born Jochim Scharmer in Elmshorn, Holstein, in 1829. He went to sea in 1847, came ashore in California in 1853, raised cattle at Brookville, Kansas, from 1871 and brought them to Sidney, Nebraska, in 1874.
  • Katie O’Connor (her page) was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1863 and married Joseph in Sidney in 1884. Where her parents, Peter and Catherine Conner, came from is still to find.
  • Joseph Sharmer II (his page) was born in Sidney in 1897, was living in Denver with his sister Laura and Myron Sager in 1910 and grew up in Reedley, California.
  • Ruby Wilson (her page) was born in Visalia in 1909. Her parents, James W. Wilson and Nettie A. Holt, were both born in Texas; Laurel gives their birthplaces as Nacogdoches and Abilene.

Every place on the map is described on the Places page.

What the DNA says

Laurel, Joseph and Ruby’s daughter, has tested with 23andMe and agreed to share her ancestry estimate here. She has about a quarter of her DNA from each of her four grandparents: Joseph I, Katie, James Wilson and Nettie Holt.

  • British & Irish, 74%: English 39.7%, Scottish 27.5%, Irish 7.0%. Most of this probably comes from the Wilson and Holt lines, and some from Katie.
  • Western European, 17%: mostly Dutch & Northern German, 13.7%.
  • Nordic, 6%: mostly Danish, 4.4%.
  • Central & Eastern European, 1.6%.

The Dutch, North German and Danish together come to about 18%, which fits Joseph I’s Holstein: a duchy ruled by the Danish king, on the North German coast. Katie’s Irish side looks small at 7%, but these are estimates, not records, and Irish ancestry often shows up as Scottish or English.

We don’t publish DNA matches or anything about living relatives who show up in them. If you are a Sharmer, Scharmer, Peters or O’Connor descendant and think we’re related, please get in touch.