Amelie’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Amelie’s biological father

Amelie is an adoptee who was searching for her biological father. With the help of another search angel Denise, they had found her maternal side and created a tree. But they were stumped on the paternal side, so I joined the team to see if I could help.

Amelie had a decent amount of paternal matches on AncestryDNA, though they were almost all below 200cm. The paternal match groups split into six different groups!

Amelie did have one match, Carson, around 400cm and was in the usual range for first cousin once removed, so I started to trace his family lines, and found that Amelie matched both of Carson’s paternal grandparent’s lines. These ended up being four of the match groups. So I built out the tree and found that Carson had three aunts. Any sons of the aunts would be in the right age range to be Amelie’s birth father.

Amelie reached out to many family members, and did not hear anything back. Then finally, months later, the wife of Carsons’s cousin Walter reached out to Amelie. Walter’s mom had brief contact with Amelie earlier in the year, and Walter reached out to Amelie after remembering her birth mother. He was eager to do a DNA test, and ordered one promptly.

However, Walter also came back as a first cousin once removed. Though he remembered Amelie’s mom, he wasn’t her father. We were puzzled over who it could be as there seemingly was no other male cousins. Eventually, it was revealed that one of Carson and Walter’s aunts had placed a son for adoption. Luckily, his full post adoptive name was known and was shared with Amelie. After a little searching, Denise found that this son, Barry, had gone to the same school as Amelie’s mother.

I was even able to piece together who Barry’s biological father was using Amelie’s DNA results. It helped that the biological father had no full siblings and records were fairly easy to find. Unfortunately, he had passed away over 60 years ago, shortly after Barry was born.

Amelie is glad to have a completed biological tree.