Amy’s search

Search goal: Find Amy’s biological father

*All names have been changed

Amy’s search was a very quick one that only took a couple of hours. She had done an Ancestry test and was looking for her biological father- she had a name of someone she had been told it was, but needed help proving it. As well, her half-sister Beth had told her that Beth’s biological father Ralph was also Amy’s biological father, though Ralph did not think this was true. So I got to work sorting Amy’s matches out using the Leeds method, as always, and making no assumptions on who the biological father was. Sometimes people will have a name and it’s correct, and other times it won’t be, so I never assume and just let the DNA reveal the answers.

Amy’s biological mother was known to her, and so Amy knew that her top two matches were her maternal uncle and maternal nephew. I continued sorting and soon figured that the two paternal groups had the common names of Samuels and Carter. I noticed her nephew matched both paternal groups, which was notable (more on this soon), and I should have noticed this sooner that Amy’s nephew was at the full nephew level and not half nephew (I guess I was still waking up and the coffee had not kicked in yet).

I started making a mirror tree for the Samuels family and quickly found the common ancestral couple. From there, I worked back down, and the first child of the couple I happened to click on, their obituary mentioned that one of their children had married someone with the last named Carter. Intrigued, I filled out the tree some more and the close matches started to fall into place very quickly. I found the Samuels-Carter marriage using some obituaries, and the marriage produced three children- two daughters and a son. The son’s name was the name of Beth’s biological father! Beth and Amy were in fact full siblings. This was reinforced by the fact Beth’s son matched Amy at a full nephew level, not half nephew level.

After relaying this info to Amy and showing her the steps I had done to arrive at Ralph, she agreed it was Ralph and was amazed at how fast she had her answers. She is also amazed that her and Beth are full siblings and not half siblings after all!