Connie’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Determine Connie’s relationship to a match, and find Connie’s biological father

Connie initially reached out for help earlier this year with a question about one of her matches. Her first cousin’s child, Anna, was matching her around 1300cm, which is much higher than the expected first cousin once removed average of 400cm.

I took a look at Connie’s matches and could see that Anna was matching on both sides of Connie’s families. I decided to build out Connie’s tree some more to see if there were some double relationships that were inflating the centimorgan numbers. That’s when Connie told me she was also looking for her biological father. Hmm!

I sorted Connie’s paternal matches into three groups and started building out trees based on the match groups. Though there was a little bit of 1800s Ontario endogamy to work with, I ended up narrowing the family tree down to a family that had the same last name as Anna’s maternal grandfather.

I then asked Connie about the possibility of her first cousin’s father also being Connie’s biological father. To my surprise, Connie agreed she had often wondered about this possibility due to past familial circumstances and had her suspicions this might be the case.

I explained that the centimorgan match to Anna would make sense because Anna was not only a first cousin once removed, but also a 3/4 niece, since Anna’s mother and Connie are 3/4 siblings (this means one parent is shared, and the non-shared parents are full siblings). So it made sense Connie and Anna were matching so closely.

Although initially a bit puzzling, Connie is glad to have her answers!