Jack’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Find Karla’s biological parents.

Ok, you may be reading this and wondering why the search goal is to find Karla’s biological parents, but it’s Jack’s search. I will explain. It is quite the story.

I started helping Karla back in September with her search for her biological parents. Unfortunately, many of her close matches are also adopted, or do not reply to our messages. So although I know of the families she is related to, I have not had any luck finding Karla’s parents yet.

One of Karla’s top matches was a lady named Kelsey. Kelsey had also been adopted, but had found her biological parents. And get this- both of Kelsey’s biological parents were also adopted. She didn’t know any family history beyond them. She helped create a group chat with her two paternal half sisters, her friend, and myself, after I offered to help her with her search, thinking it could possibly help with Karla’s search.

I took a look at Kelsey’s matches and she had 6 groups of matches, which was a lot, but they were all very distinct and many matches had trees, so I started to put together some tree branches. Kelsey told me that her biological father’s name was Jack, and his biological father was a Marine, and his biological mother was from Quebec and had a twin. That is all we had to go on.

It took me a few days to narrow it down but I eventually found the family that I believed the Marine was from. He was the only one of all his siblings that was a Marine- the rest were in the Army. He was the right age to be Jack’s parent, the DNA all lined up, and I was confident that I had found the right man. Unfortunately, he had died a few years after Jack had been born, and had no other kids (that we know of!)

I started to research another group that had links to Quebec. As I started working down the tree, I found the name of one of Kelsey’s top matches in an obituary of a family I was focusing on. I started to look at the names and birthdays of this match’s aunts and uncles. And I discovered, he had aunts that were twin sisters. Unfortunately, the twins had both passed away, but one had had two daughters. I realized that this match Greg was in the right range to be a first cousin of Jack, and I suggested that Kelsey reach out to her match. She did, and eventually it came out that Jack’s birth was a family secret, and the twin that had later had two daughters was Jack’s biological mother. Kelsey and her sisters and friend were amazed I had figured this all out on so little to go on, and Jack slowly got in touch with his biological family and even purchased a DNA kit.

So now that I had Kelsey’s paternal side sorted out and completed, I knew that Karla was from Kelsey’s maternal side and was a half aunt to Kelsey (all Kelsey’s mutual matches had half the shared cm amount). Kelsey’s biological mother was born within months of Karla, so we knew that Kelsey’s biological mother and Karla were paternal half siblings. So finally, I knew what side one group of Karla’s matches were from. Unfortunately, the few closer mutual matches have some adoptions in the family, and we are stuck for the time being until more matches appear, but I was happy to have helped Kelsey and her biological father Jack get some answers. Hopefully one day I will be posting about Kelsey’s biological mother, and of course, Karla’s own search.