Coral’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Find Coral’s biological parents

Coral is an adoptee that reached out for help finding her biological parents. She knew her biological mother’s name and approximate birth year, and had done an AncestryDNA test in hopes of finding more.

Coral’s matches split into 4 groups, each representing one of her grandparent lines. Two groups had matches that were all from Canada, and the other two groups had matches from America. She also had a close match in the 1500cm range that connected both the Canadian match groups.

I started working with one of the Canadian match groups, the larger one that was connected by the last name Roberts. This family was huge, and since they were from Manitoulin Island, the family was quite large and it took a little while to narrow the family branch down, but eventually I did narrow it down and thought I had found the man who was Coral’s maternal grandfather.

The other Canadian match group was harder as they had recent Scottish heritage and I wasn’t able to find the common last name. I tried to find Coral’s maternal grandfather’s wife’s maiden name, but was unable to do so. Instead, I searched Coral’s maternal grandfather’s name, who seemed to be still alive, and did end up finding Coral’s biological mother quite quickly after that. Unfortunately, she had passed away earlier this year. Her obituary listed another daughter, who was Coral’s top Ancestry match.

Coral’s paternal side took me a little longer. We knew from non identifying information that her biological father was American and what year he was born in. I found the last names of the two match groups- Nichols and Freeman, and built the trees out.

Coral’s top paternal match Bonnie was the right age and cM to be a half aunt. However, Coral only had DNA from Bonnie’s dad’s side, Bonnie’s niece was matching in the second cousin range. As well, Bonnie’s two brothers were older than the age we had for Coral’s biological father. I was puzzled.

After some digging, I discovered that a lady from the Freeman family had married Bonnie’s dad’s brother. And they had a son born in the year that was on Coral’s paperwork! So with that, we knew Coral’s biological father had been found.

Coral looks forward to learning more about her biological origins and connecting with relatives soon.