Cierra’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Cierra’s maternal great grandparents

Cierra reached out for help recently with help with her search. Her maternal grandfather Daniel had not been officially adopted, but did not know his biological parents growing up and had been in foster care for his youth. Sadly Daniel passed away after doing an AncestryDNA test with Cierra, but Cierra was still hopeful she could find his biological families and get some health information from both of his sides.

Cierra had access to her grandfather’s Ancestry account, so she logged on and sent me a collaborator invite to his DNA results.

I took a look and saw right away that Daniel was exactly 50% Ashkenazi Jewish and 50% English/Scottish. Often the ethnicities are not noted in these search writeups, but since they were distinct, and we did not know which side was which, it is relevant to note for this search.

I then looked at Daniel’s matches and the matches sorted evenly in to two groups on each parent’s side. His closest match after Cierra was a man named Saul from the Jewish side who was in the right age and cm range to be a first cousin. I looked at his tree and found his maternal side was from Ontario where Daniel had been born. Saul had two aunts and one uncle that were all the right age to be Daniel’s biological parent, but as I researched them all, I found they were all married before Daniel had been born. We speculated that Saul’s uncle may have been one of the parents, but then I figured we needed to figure out which side was which first before further speculation.

I showed Cierra how to upload her grandpa’s DNA file to Gedmatch and FamilyTreeDNA and explained we were hoping for X matches. Even just one X match would determine which side was going to be Daniel’s maternal side and which would be paternal.

While we waited for the results, I took a look at the English side. Indeed both match groups were very recent English, but two matches, Sally and Joe, from the Burke last name group were Canadian and were second cousins once removed to each other.

Sally and Joe were descended from two sisters who had come to Canada but lived in different cities. Joe’s branch was from where Daniel had been born, so I started looking at his grandmother’s siblings, as there were three great aunts that could potentially be a biological parent of Daniel. However I thought if it was one of them, why wasn’t Joe matching higher, and also matching the other English match group? Was there a half relationship somewhere?

I started looking at the oldest sister, Agatha and found that Agatha had been born one month after her parents had been married. Hmm. I started to think perhaps Agatha was a half sibling to the rest of her younger sisters. I also found that Agatha had married a man whose rather distinct last name was Daniel’s middle name.

As I searched Agatha’s name in the newspapers, I found a small mention of her whereabouts being requested by an infant and children’s home (essentially a foster home back in the day) a few years after Daniel’s birth. In another clipping, her husband’s whereabouts was also requested by the same home. Agatha only had one child, a daughter who died in infancy over a decade before, so this was a notable find. Agatha’s two younger sisters did not have any children, only Joe’s grandmother had known children.

The next day, the Gedmatch results were in, and Daniel had two X matches- Sally and her mother, who had tested on another DNA site. So now we knew that Daniel’s maternal side was the English group and paternal was Jewish, meaning Saul’s uncle was Daniel’s biological father. Agatha was presumably his biological mother.

Cierra reached out to a paternal half sibling of Daniel’s, who was surprised at the revelation but happy to provide some health info for her. Cierra also reached out to Sally using the email she listed on Gedmatch. Sally too was surprised to hear of the news but was able to provide Cierra with more insight about Agatha as well as even a picture of her and some family information.

Agatha did indeed have a different father than her younger sisters, and this was a known family fact- and it was why Joe did not share the other English match group with Daniel. While Agatha’s own biological father is still unknown until additional matches appear, we were able to narrow it down to a set of siblings, with particular interest in one due to military involvement.

As I live very close to where Agatha and her family grew up and lived their lives, I was also able to go out and take pictures for Cierra of the Burke family home as well as the home Agatha lived in with her husband and daughter. 95 years ago, Agatha lived on the same street as I currently do. I was also able to find and take photos of the gravestone of Agatha’s infant daughter, and the gravestone of Agatha’s father that raised her. Agatha is noted on the headstone though her burial details are unknown.

Cierra was pleased and very happy to have completed her grandfather’s search and have some health info and pictures of biological relatives. While some family mysteries remain, she is glad to have uncovered the identities of her grandfather’s biological parents.