Patrick’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Patrick’s biological father

Patrick is an adoptee who reached out for help finding his birth father. Another search angel had helped find Patrick’s birthmother, but she had passed away, leaving Patrick with just some non-identifying information that was hopefully correct, and his AncestryDNA results. He knew the rough age of his birthfather, his ethnicity, and his hair, skin and eye color.

Patrick’s daughter (who I communicated with for this search) helped add me to his matches as a collaborator and I got to work sorting the matches. Since the maternal side was known, it was easy to do and the paternal matches split into two groups: the Farrells and the McCabes. Thanks to some great matches that had good trees, I was able to find the common ancestral couple of each group very easily.

I noticed both families lived in a US state far away from where Patrick had been born. Patrick’s ethnicity estimate also reflected this research. I kept this in my mind as I knew I would be looking for someone who was living in or near the border city Patrick had been born in.

Rather quickly, I found that a daughter of the McCabe couple had married a grandson of the Farrell couple. They had only two children- a son and a daughter. The son was in the right age range to be Patrick’s birthfather, and the description of his appearance matched exactly to a WW2 record card found on Ancestry that noted his appearance. As well, I found records that proved the son was living very close to where Patrick was born in the years leading up to his birth- on the other side of the border city that Patrick was born in.

This was a quick search and Patrick and his family are happy to have some more insight into their ancestors and hope to learn more soon.