Jesse’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Jesse’s biological father

Jesse is an adoptee that reached out for help finding his biological father. He had no information about him, but had hopes that an AncestryDNA test would help him find paternal relatives in his search for health information.

I took a look at Jesse’s paternal matches and split them into three groups and found the common last name for each match group. There was one match, a younger woman about my age named Sarah, who was part of two groups so I built out her tree first and found that two of her great grandparents were the union couple that tied two of the match groups together.

I started looking at Sarah’s grandfather’s siblings and finding their spouses, looking for one that had married into the Saunders family which was the common last name of the third match group. Sure enough, I quickly found the union couple, and Jesse’s top paternal match from the Saunders side turned out to be a first cousin once removed from his paternal grandmother’s side.

Next I looked for obituaries of Jesse’s paternal grandparents to see how many children they had. To my surprise they only had one son, who was about the right age and in the right place at the right time to be Jesse’s biological father.

Jesse was pleased with my quick findings and hopes to learn more about his paternal biological family soon.