Colette’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Colette’s maternal grandmother

Colette is the daughter of an adoptee who was searching for her mother’s biological mother. She had already found her mother’s biological father, and had some information on her mother’s biological mother from a 1921 census. The census listed her first and last name (Martha Goodman), age, province of birth, locations of where her parents had been born, and ethnicity. Colette also had adoption information that mentioned where Martha had been born. However, besides the census, there seemed to be no trace of Martha, and no Goodmans in Colette’s matches.

I took a look at Colette’s AncestryDNA matches and found that she had a lot of matches from her maternal grandmother’s line. I looked through the trees of the matches and saw that many were connected to the McCallum family from Ireland. I found the common ancestral couple pretty quickly, and saw that they had many children that had come to the USA. However, I noticed they had one daughter that had come to Canada, and married a man from the town where Martha had been born, and had many children with him.

I looked through their children and found one with the middle name Martha that was born in the right year, and all the details of her parents lined up with the known information as well. Additionally, I found a smaller match group that was from Martha’s father’s line.

Colette is very happy to know more about her maternal grandmother and her family.