Lesley’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Lesley’s maternal grandfather

Lesley reached out earlier this year for help finding her maternal grandfather. Lesley’s mother, who had passed away, did not know who her biological father was, only that his last name may have been Nelson and that he was from Scotland, had moved to Winnipeg, and then to British Columbia.

Lesley had done a DNA test and had a maternal match from her mystery line with a lady named Cara who had no tree, but had a friend on Facebook with the last name Nelson, so she wanted help finding out if this was a true connection to the name or a mere coincidence.

I took a look at Lesley’s matches, and took a look at the shared matches with Cara. There was indeed a connection to the Nelson family, as many matches had this name in their tree, and as I started building it out, it was clear that Lesley’s maternal grandfather was going to be between a sibling set of 6 brothers from the Nelson family!

Only two brothers had moved from Winnipeg to British Columbia. After researching both brothers and Lesley speaking to Nelson family members, we reasoned that Gus was most likely to be the biological father of Lesley’s mom. His age, timeline, and life details seemed to match the best. Lesley hopes that one of Gus’s grandchildren will test one day to prove our theory.