Andrew’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Andrew’s biological mother

Andrew is a Canadian adoptee whose wife reached out for assistance with his search at the start of the year. They had found Andrew’s paternal side, but needed help with the maternal side. They knew Andrew’s biological mother’s name, which was a fairly common French Canadian name, knew approximate ages of her parents, as well as how many sisters and brothers she had, and their birth order.

Andrew had tested with AncestryDNA, and despite his biological mother being from Quebec, he did not have that many closer matches, and few had trees to work with.

His second closest maternal match, Claudia, was in the 300cm range and had a nice tree, so I took a look and figured that one of Claudia’s parents was going to be a first cousin of Andrew’s biological mother.

It took me a little while due to endogamy in Claudia’s families, but I figured out that Claudia’s maternal grandfather had a sister who married someone with same the last name that Andrew had at birth. I took a look at their children, and sure enough, the genders and birth order matched Andrew’s information, and they had a daughter with the same name as Andrew’s biological mother- Eleanor.

With the help of another search angel Angela, we found Eleanor on Facebook as well as some of her relatives. Andrew decided to send her a message, but did not hear back. Weeks and months went by with no sign that Eleanor had even seen the message.

Eventually, we came up with the idea to send a cautious, generic message to a younger person who appeared to have a fairly close relationship with Eleanor. She saw the message rather quickly and agreed to pass the message on to Eleanor. Eleanor agreed to share her contact information with Andrew, and so Andrew wrote her a thoughtful letter and sent it in the mail. We were sure we had found the right Eleanor, but her response would be the ultimate confirmation.

A little time went by and Andrew eventually received a call from Eleanor, who was indeed his biological mother. They were very happy to reunite with each other and even met in person less than two weeks later!