Marissa’s search

Search goals: Find Marissa’s biological father, and her mother’s biological father.

*All names have been changed

Marissa’s case was a two in one, as there were two mysteries at hand! Marissa was looking for her biological father after learning of the possibility that the father who raised her was not her biological father. As well, her mother (who had passed away) did not know who her biological father was.

Marissa’s matches sorted into five groups, and she had three main groups and then two groups that were more distant, indicating that one of her grandparent groups may not have had any close testers.

Luckily, Marissa’s maternal half brother had tested also, which made sorting maternal from the paternal sides easy because they shared a mother. Marissa had some close matches on her paternal side, and they had great trees too which was very helpful. I always love when people have great trees to work off of.

I found the man I believed (and later proved) to be her paternal grandfather Richard pretty easily. But he seemingly only had two daughters with his wife, so I was puzzled. After going back and forth with Marissa, she told me that Richard had actually had a previous marriage which produced one son and one daughter. I knew right away that the son had to be Marissa’s biological father, and after looking at Richard’s first wife, I could tell Marissa was descended from her based on her parent’s last names on her death certificate- those last names were the common names of the two distant groups on her paternal side. So that was one mystery solved!

After some intense research with the mystery maternal group, I found Marissa’s maternal grandfather as well. Her top match in that group turned out to be a half uncle, who was not surprised about his dad fathering a child in the midst of his marriage.

Marissa was very happy to have her mysteries solved, and she has several half siblings who were very eager to get to know her. She has connected with her biological father as well.