Stella’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Stella’s maternal grandfather.

Stella reached out for help recently with finding her mother’s biological father. Stella’s mom was adopted and she had found her maternal side, but was hoping to find more on the paternal side.

I took a look at Stella’s AncestryDNA matches and got to work. Stella’s maternal matches split into two groups, and one was easily identified as her known maternal grandmother’s side.

With that group isolated, I looked at the maternal grandfather matches and saw that the matches seemed to all be connected by the last names Daniels and Richmond. I looked through the trees and found the union couple between the Daniels and Richmond families pretty quickly.

The union couple was each born in the late 1800s, so I knew I’d be looking at one of their children being Stella’s maternal grandfather. Fortunately, they only had two daughters and one son, James, which made it very easy. James also had a grandson that had tested and was matching in the perfect range to be a half first cousin to Stella.

James had actually worked for Stella’s maternal grandmother’s father, so we were even able to figure out how Stella’s maternal grandparents likely met. Stella is happy to have answers and complete her biological maternal side of her tree.