Hannah’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Hannah’s biological father

Hannah is an adoptee who reached out for help with finding her biological father. She had found her biological mother’s family, but her biological mother had unfortunately passed away, so Hannah took an AncestryDNA test in hopes of learning more about her biological family.

I took a look at her AncestryDNA results and sorted her matches into 3 groups based on who matched who. I was able to easily find the common last name of each match group and got busy building the research tree.

Two of Hannah’s closer matches were second cousins to each other, and I figured Hannah would also be a second cousin to them, as their great grandparents connected two of the match groups. I started looking at their grandparents’ siblings and quickly found the marriage to someone with the common last name from Hannah’s third match group. I knew this couple was going to be Hannah’s paternal grandparents.

I found Hannah’s paternal grandfather’s obituary which listed two sons. I used newspapers to figure out the sons’ approximate ages. Hannah and I agreed that the younger son, who was closer in age to her biological mother, was likely her biological father.

Hannah sent him a message, and he quickly responded, confirming he knew her biological mother. Hannah is happy to have connected with her biological father and additional paternal family members.