Cassidy’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Find Cassidy’s biological father

My friend and fellow genetic genealogist Jane reached out for help with Cassidy’s search. Cassidy was searching for her biological father, and her paternal side had a bit of east coast endogamy, along with several paternal matches also adopted or without trees, that was making the search challenging.

I was able to sort Cassidy’s matches into two groups- Brighton and Clark, and made a research tree with the matches that did have trees. We eventually found common ancestors between the matches, narrowed it down and found two brothers from the Brighton family had married two sisters from the Clark family. I figured Cassidy’s biological father would be the son of one of the couples. But without closer matches, I wasn’t sure which couple it was. Both families were from around the region were Cassidy was born. There was one great grandson match of one of the couples, but it was hard to know if he was matching to Cassidy higher than he should due to the double relation.

We were stuck for months. I eventually revisited the search and found that one of the Clark/Brighton couples had moved west to another province. I was able to find their obituaries, and one was from just a few years before Cassidy was born. It listed the entire immediate family as being in their current province, except for one son, Sam, who was listed as living in the specific town where Cassidy had been born.

At the same time, Jane worked to find Sam’s obituary, as he had been listed as deceased in an obituary of a sibling about a decade ago. She found Sam’s obituary and it listed all his relatives in the other province, as well as several children of his own. Jane found them on Facebook and eventually Cassidy got in touch with her half siblings, and everyone was amazed at the resemblance between Cassidy, her siblings and their biological father. Cassidy is very glad to now know her paternal roots.