Fiona’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Find Fiona’s biological father

Fiona reached out for help last year finding her biological father. She knew her maternal side, and had tested with AncestryDNA and 23andMe, which matched her with thousands of people on her paternal side. Her paternal side had deep roots in New Brunswick, and I could tell there was endogamy as I wasn’t able to sort her matches- they were all one big group.

Eventually I found that several of Fiona’s closer matches were descended from a common ancestral couple from the mid 1800s. Her top match was a grandchild of this couple, and I figured based on age, that this match would likely be a first cousin once removed of Fiona’s and a first cousin of her biological father.

The common ancestral couple had 15 children, and many of those children had married relatives, and the grandchildren count was quite high as well. I was initially very overwhelmed and wondered how I would be able to narrow it down.

However, I kept in mind that Fiona had been born in Quebec, so I combed through the grandchildren, and eventually found two brothers who had both died in Quebec. They were both in the right age range to be her biological father.

One brother had never married and had no children, but the other brother had two living sons. Fiona eventually managed to reach out to one of them, and he agreed to do a DNA test. After a month or so, the results were in, and Fiona was a first cousin match, proving that her biological father was indeed the other brother. Fiona is glad to finally have her answers.