Simon’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Simon’s biological parents

Simon’s former wife Maria reached out (with his permission) for help with finding Simon’s biological parents. He was adopted and had little info, only knowing that his biological parents were fairly young when they had him. Simon had done an AncestryDNA test in hopes of uncovering more.

Maria had built out some trees of Simon’s matches already which was very helpful, but she hadn’t been able to tie the match groups together, and was also stuck because she did not know which side was which.

Simon’s “parent 2” side matches were decent and split into two unique groups. I was quickly able to find the union couple that connected the two match groups. This brought me to the Grenville family that had two sons and one daughter. With no information to determine if this was Simon’s paternal or maternal side, I moved on to the Parent 1 side to see if that might help.

Parent 1 side was harder as there were not as many matches. However, I was able to narrow it down from the common ancestors of the two match groups, and once again, found the union couple that connected both the match groups. This led me to a family from the east coast of Canada. Notably, one young man from this family had moved west and and started appearing in voter’s lists in the town that Simon had been born, around the time Simon was born!

This made me think it was the daughter from the Grenville family that was Simon’s biological mother, and the parent 1 side was Simon’s paternal side, with his biological father being the man that moved to the town where he had been born. Due to their unique first and last names, I was able to easily find social media profiles for both of Simon’s presumed biological parents.

I gave this information with Maria and Simon, and eventually about a year later, it was confirmed that my theories were right. They had reached out to Simon’s biological mother who was receptive and even ended up an AncestryDNA test of her own. They are glad to have figured out Simon’s biological origins.