Tiffany’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Find Tiffany’s dad’s biological father

Tiffany reached out to me earlier this month with help finding her dad Walter’s biological father. She had heard of me through two of her friends who I had helped last year, and I was happy to help her out.

Walter was raised by his mother (who had passed away decades ago) who had revealed only a little about the identity of his biological father. So, I hopped on Tiffany’s AncestryDNA results as a collaborator as I always do, and took a look at her matches.

Since Tiffany knew her other three grandparents and had done a nice tree already, it was easy to find the matches that were from her paternal grandfather’s side. There were two separate groups so I worked on building trees out and eventually connected the two groups.

Quickly enough, I had it down to two possible branches. Two brothers from one family had married two sisters from the other family, and I figured that Walter’s dad was a son of one of the couples. The age and location was all correct, but without closer DNA matches, it would be hard to know which couple the son was from- and both couples had had several sons.

I relayed this information to Tiffany, and sent her a link to the research tree I had done so she could check it out. Right away, she noticed one of the potential biological fathers, who had a distinct nickname he was known by- we will call him Luke. She then revealed that Luke had been mentioned by her grandmother as the father, and that the last name I had found was correct and that Luke’s last name was on his original birth certificate. (Honestly, I love when people hold back a little information, and then the information I find lines up with what they know. It helps prevent any bias when I am searching!).

Unfortunately Luke had also passed away decades ago, but he did have some other children with other women, so I searched for them and found them, and Tiffany plans to reach out soon.