Stanley’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Stanley’s biological father.

Stanley is an adoptee that reached out for help finding his biological family. He had some of his adoption paperwork, and my fellow searcher Sophie had been helping him for a little bit. She had located his biological mother, but Stanley needed help with his AncestryDNA results and figuring out who his biological father was.

Since Stanley’s biological mother was known, I was able to easily figure out which of his matches were from his maternal side. The good news was that Stanley had many more paternal matches, and many were decently closely matched to him. His paternal matches split into two main groups: The Stephenson group, and the Middleton group. One match was even part of both groups. I thought this was going to be an easy search due to the matches seeming so good, however, it was a bit of a challenge!

Stanley’s closest paternal matches were as follows:

• Randall, 1000cm, born and adopted in 1940, died in 2018, part of the Middleton group
• Molly, 950cm, born and adopted in 1944, died in 2021, part of the Stephenson group
• Jessica, 850cm, whose father Ralph was born and adopted in 1942, and died in 2022, part of both Stephenson and Middleton groups
• Mary, 650cm, born and adopted in the late 1930s or early 1940s, part of the Middleton group
• Michael, 500cm, nephew of Molly
• John, 265cm, grandson of Molly
• Melissa, 175cm, Molly’s great niece

The rest of the matches were well below 100cm. I was surprised that five of the seven top paternal matches were either adopted, had passed away, both, or were descended from an adoptee.

Randall’s family did not respond to my messages sent on behalf of Stanley. Molly’s biological parents were listed in her obituary, so that gave me a start and helped me figure how she was related to a few of the other Stephenson matches. After chatting with a family member, it was a known adoption and Molly and her siblings had been raised in and out of care.

Jessica was searching for answers as her father had been abandoned at a restaurant in the early 1940s and was then adopted, so she had nothing but her DNA results to go on. Though this search started out to find answers for Stanley, it also became a search for Jessica and her late father as well.

Mary did have a tree, but it was not linked to her DNA and there was no home person. Messages sent to her on Ancestry went unread.

I started by looking at Molly’s tree and shared matches. She was a generation older than Stanley, and the DNA connections seemed to be coming from only her biological father Oscar’s line. There were matches coming from both of Oscar’s own parents, but not his wife (Molly’s biological mother). Stanley’s shared matches with Molly suggested that Molly was going to be a half aunt to Stanley.

However, Molly had no known paternal half brothers. She had three full brothers, and a maternal half brother, but no paternal half brothers from Oscar, that were known. I figured Oscar may have had a son (or two) with a woman that he was not married to, and these sons were Stanley’s biological father and Jessica’s biological father.

I revisited Stanley’s adoption information to see if that would be of any help combined with the DNA results.

His paperwork did have a lot of information on it- based on the ages given, we knew that his biological father was born about 1943, his mother was born about 1919, his father had apparently died in WW2 and his mother didn’t like to talk about him, his mother had remarried around 1945, and had a son and then two daughters with her second husband within the next five years. Ages were provided for all three children at the time Stanley was born.

I decided to take a look at Mary’s tree. There were Middletons in the tree, but I was having a hard time figuring out how she was connected to them because her DNA results were not connected to her tree, and there was no home person in the tree. Eventually I went through and by following the branches that were the most detailed, I found the woman who I believed was Mary’s biological mother. The tree had noted Mary’s birth name in this woman’s tree profile, which helped confirm my theories.

I took a closer look at Mary’s biological mother Gloria and saw that she was born in 1918. Besides Mary, her obituary listed two sons and two daughters. I wondered if this could be Stanley’s biological father’s family.

Using newspapers.com, I found the three birth announcements for Gloria’s second son and her two daughters. All three were born in the approximate years provided in Stanley’s adoption information. With the help of the newspapers, it was clear that this was the right family.

After much research and time, we had figured out how everyone was related to each other:

Oscar Stephenson had 4 children with his wife, one of which was Molly. Oscar had then had two children with Gloria (who he was not married to)- Jessica’s dad and Stanley’s biological father. Before those two sons were born, Gloria had two children, Randall and Mary, that were placed for adoption. Jessica’s dad was also adopted after being abandoned at a restaurant. Gloria then had three children which she raised with her second husband. Stanley’s biological father was raised by his mother Gloria and his stepfather.

It was quite the puzzle, but Stanley, as well as Jessica, are glad that we sorted it all out, and he now has a complete biological tree.