*All names have been changed
Search goal: Find Shane’s biological parents
Shane is a Canadian adoptee that reached out for help in search of his birthparents. All the information he had was his birthmother’s full name, and approximate age. With that in mind, I took a look at his Ancestry results and got to work.
Shane turned out to have a very rich family history in the Maritimes which meant he had a lot of matches. I sorted his matches and found he had one large group and two smaller groups. Next, I looked for the common last name that connected the matches within each group. I did find that one of the smaller groups had the same last name as Shane’s birthmother, so I started with that group, and started creating a tree with his matches.
Rather quickly I was able to find the couple that united the two smaller match groups. I found the obituary of the man I thought was Shane’s maternal grandfather, and indeed it listed his birthmother. Another Acadian genealogy site also confirmed I had found the right family. She was easily found on Facebook due to her siblings having unique married last names!
Now knowing that Shane’s paternal side was the large group, I attempted to make a tree but found there were two families within the group that seemingly did not connect despite everyone matching each other. However, after a little research, we discovered that Shane’s top match was a paternal half sibling, which made identifying his birthfather a piece of cake. Shane is very happy to be learning about his biological family.
Lauren’s Genetic Genealogy 