Carmen’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goals: Identify Carmen’s biological parents and locate her siblings

Author note: While this search is considered partially complete instead of fully complete like the others I post, I am publishing it now to highlight how access to different resources that become available over time can help with an adoption search. If progress is made on Carmen’s paternal side, this post will be updated.

2021

Carmen first reached out for help with her search in 2021. She was adopted and had some information about her biological family, including her biological mother’s name, some of her sibling’s first names (that were also adopted as well) and the fact that her biological mother had likely passed away. Carmen had done an AncestryDNA test in hopes of finding any biological relatives.

When I first started helping Carmen, Ancestry did not yet split matches into maternal and paternal. I sorted the matches and they sorted into three groups, with two of the closer matches being from two match groups. It was fairly easy to find the common last name of each match group, and there was indeed one match group connected by the last name Collins, which was Carmen’s biological mother’s last name. We figured this match group was one of the maternal match groups.

Another one of the match groups was connected by common ancestors with Danish heritage, and the closer matches were from this group, so I started mapping out the tree using the matches from this group. I found that a lady named Martha descended from the match group’s most recent common ancestors had married someone with the last name Collins. With Carmen’s permission, matches were contacted to find out if they knew anything about Martha or her husband or children. Nobody seemed to know their whereabouts, and there was some confusion over whether Martha’s husband was named Emmett or Emmerson. Carmen’s closest match, a first cousin once removed, did remember her cousin’s names, but did not know their whereabouts.

The third match group was a large Pennsylvanian Dutch based group, and though matches in this group were very helpful, particularly a match named Lena Carson who was eager to help (and who I became good friends with!), but I was unable to connect any of the three match groups together. The common ancestor of several matches [that we theorized Carmen was also descended from] had children with two brothers, so that added to the puzzle. I knew I was likely on the lookout for the last name Kaufmann.

We reached out to a probable biological uncle of Carmen, but he was not interested in corresponding about his family and blocked me. In addition, the two close-ish matches that were part of the Collins and the Pennsylvanian Dutch groups were both descended from different adoptees and were unable to help. Despite this, we were not discouraged and continued to search.

2022

Some time went by and in the summer of 2022, Ancestry’s match splitting was released, which helped immensely to see which sides of Carmen’s family the matches were on. We were correct about the Collins and the Danish group being on Carmen’s maternal side, but to our surprise, the Pennsylvanian Dutch group was also on Carmen’s maternal side.

The match splitting also helped us see that Carmen had very few matches on her paternal side, and the ones she did have were very distant- the closest match being 44cm. Most of these matches had very recent Polish, Hungarian and German ancestry.

We theorized that someone from the Collins group had married someone from the Kaufmann, and a child from this union was Carmen’s maternal grandfather, but I was still unable to connect the match groups.

2023

More time went by and in early 2023, when additional Ontario death registrations were published on Ancestry, I happened to find a document while searching the Collins last name that helped pull some things together. It was a death registration of a young girl who had been killed in a car accident in the town Carmen was born in- and her parents were listed as Martin Emmett Collins and Anna Kaufmann. It turned out Martin and Anna had been briefly married (their marriage registration was not yet available online for me to find), and then split and married other people. We theorized that they had also had a son during their brief union, and this son was Emmett Collins, Carmen’s maternal grandfather. Lena Carson was also very excited to learn of this as it helped her fill out some information in her own tree, as Anna was her great-grandaunt and she didn’t have much info about her.

In later 2023, the Hamilton Spectator newspapers became available online, which helped immensely with Carmen’s search. We were able to locate Carmen’s biological mother’s obituary which sadly confirmed she had passed away, but it named many relatives and helped fill out the family tree some more.

2024

In early 2024, I had someone reach out to me on Ancestry, stating that she was researching for a friend of hers and that I had her friend’s biological mother’s name in one of my trees. Intrigued, I responded and asked her which tree, and it turned out that her friend was Carmen’s sibling! Not only that, they were raised with their other sibling, and both were excited to know they had found a sister. Within hours, Carmen was in contact with her two siblings.

After a long few years of searching, I am very happy that Carmen has finally connected with two of her siblings. I hope to one day update this post with progress on her paternal side.