Greg and Emmanuel’s searches

*All names have been changed

Search goals: Identify Greg and Emmanuel’s biological fathers, and expand the tree for their shared maternal line.

Greg and Emmanuel are maternal half siblings that were adopted together. They were looking for information on their respective biological paternal lines as well as their shared biological maternal line, and their mother had reached out for research assistance.

Part 1- Greg’s paternal side

I decided to start with Greg’s paternal side, as he had the best AncestryDNA matches. Matching Emmanuel made it very easy to sort Greg’s paternal matches and there were two distinct paternal groups from Nova Scotia.

Greg’s top paternal match was a man named Joe that seemed to be at least one or two generations older than him. I found that Greg had matches from Joe’s mother’s side. Since Joe was a decently close match, way closer than first cousin once removed range, I figured the relation was going to be rather close.

I found that Joe had two younger half brothers that were much closer to Greg’s biological mother’s age. These half brothers were in fact twins and though we are still trying to determine which one is his biological father, Greg is glad to have it at least narrowed down to them.

The twins’ own biological father was an NPE and I was able to narrow their father down to between a set of many brothers from Nova Scotia.

Part 2- Emmanuel’s paternal side

Emmanuel’s paternal side initially looked daunting as I could see there was lots of French and Acadian last names in the trees of his paternal matches. However, his mother did have a name for his biological father, so I kept it in mind and started my research.

Emmanuel’s paternal matches split into three distinct groups, which was surprising since he also had some decent matches for me to work with, though none above 600 centimorgans.

His top paternal match was from the match group connected by the Joubert last name, which was encouraging as this was the supposed last name of Emmanuel’s biological father. I could tell that the most recent common ancestor of this group was a man who had three wives and many children with each, so I started to do some research on him, and sure enough, his obituary listed the name of Emmanuel’s biological father.

Next, I found Emmanuel’s biological father’s mother through obituaries and traced her lines. Her own maternal side was from PEI and I could tell that was one of the two remaining paternal match groups. But she had a Russian last name, and apparently a father from Russia- yet Emmanuel’s remaining paternal match group was very French group from Quebec. Emmanuel had no Russian heritage, either. I started to think that like Greg, Emmanuel also had an NPE up his paternal line.

I found the common ancestors of the French match group and they had a granddaughter that was Emmanuel’s closest paternal match. This match and her siblings were born in the same small town in Northern Ontario that Emmanuel’s paternal grandmother had been born in. She was also around the age of his grandmother, so based on the centimorgans shared, I knew she had to be a great half-aunt.

Part 3- Greg and Emmanuel’s maternal line

Greg and Emmanuel had a lot of maternal matches on Ancestry, but most weren’t very close matches, and many did not have trees or only had partial trees. The top match however was a known paternal first cousin of their biological mother, and she had provided the names of Greg and Emmanuel’s maternal grandparents, but had no further information.

After a little research using NewspaperArchive, I found this match’s father’s obituary, which then listed all of his siblings, which included the maternal grandfather of Greg and Emmanuel. From there I was able to build out this side of the family some more with names, dates, and obituaries.

Greg and Emmanuel’s maternal grandmother seemed to go by two different last names, and though there is a clear DNA connection to one of the names, we are still working on building out her side of the tree. Overall, they are very happy to have been able to discover more about their biological families and look forward to learning more.