Jenna’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Jenna’s biological father

Jenna reached out for help recently with finding her biological father. She knew her maternal side, and had taken an AncestryDNA test, so I took a look at her matches and got to work.

Her paternal matches split into two distinct family groups, which was good. However, both families were very large, so it took some time to build out the trees. I quickly saw that one of Jenna’s great-grandparents was going to be 1 of 21 children!

Both of the family groups had lived in the same area of Ontario for some time, so several people from the Templeton family had married several people from the Grafton family. Jenna had many matches, so I was able to map the tree out easily and then found the man I believed was Jenna’s paternal grandfather Anthony. However, he had 19 children! I wondered how we would determine which son was Jenna’s biological father.

After taking a closer look at Anthony, I found that he had two wives, and Jenna was only related through his second wife, who he had ten children with. Of those ten children, there were three sons, and the first son was born the year after Anthony had married his wife. He was closest in age to Jenna’s biological mother.

Jenna’s biological mother also confirmed she knew the son we presumed was Jenna’s biological father. Unfortunately, he has passed away, but Jenna hopes to connect with her paternal half siblings soon.