Susie’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Susie’s paternal grandparents

Susie reached out for help recently for help finding her paternal grandparents. Her father, who had passed away, had been adopted, and she was curious about her biological family. Susie knew her dad’s birth name and his birthmother’s profession at the time he was born, but that was all.

Susie had done an AncestryDNA test and had lots of paternal matches. They split into two groups: the McDowell side, which was her father’s birth last name, and the the McFetridge side. Susie had done some research already for the McDowell side and found the common ancestors, which was great. It was just a question of which McDowell sister was her paternal grandmother. There were many sisters, and after researching them some more and placing the matches into the tree, I determined that it was going to be between the oldest sister and the third born sister. One had no children, and the other one had only one daughter, so Susie plans to reach out in hopes of confirming this side for good one day.

Susie’s paternal grandfather’s side turned out to be easier, despite many of the matches being adopted or had discovered an NPE. After building out a tree, I found that the biological name was McFetridge. Susie’s top match in this match group was not adopted, and after I started tracing her line, I figured Susie was a half first cousin to the top match and they shared a paternal grandfather, Paul.

This was reinforced by other closer matches as well. Two of them were the biological children of a man named Frank, and several Frank’s grandchildren had also tested because Frank was adopted too. I actually knew a partner of one his grandchildren, and we pieced together, based on the DNA and the cM numbers, that Frank was also a biological child of Paul. It was great to help out some of Frank’s descendants in this search too. Susie is looking forward to learning more.