Christine’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Christine’s paternal great grandparents

Christine reached out for help earlier this year with her family mystery. Her paternal grandfather Edward had been adopted around the turn of the century, shortly after he was born in 1899, and she was in search of his biological parents.

Christine had done some research herself and had a theory about the identity of Edward’s biological mother based on some family lore. She had heard it was a lady named Caroline McWhirter. Christine had done an AncestryDNA test which indeed revealed connections to a McWhirter family from the area, which was good to see. It also revealed many matches to a family unknown to Christine- the Watkins family.

Christine had more matches from the Watkins family than the McWhirter family, so I started with them first and built out a research tree with the matches. The top match in the Watkins group, Susie, I quickly theorized was going to be a half first cousin once removed of Christine, and that Susie’s grandfather John was the father of Edward. It certainly made the most sense- John was the right age, and would have been in the right place at the right time. John’s parents were the most recent common ancestors of the Watkins family. However, the best evidence was that John’s granddaughter Susie was a much closer DNA match to Christine than John’s siblings’ descendants.

With Edward’s paternal side figured out, I then looked at the maternal side, the McWhirter family. I took a look at the family of Caroline McWhirter, who Christine had thought might be Edward’s biological mother. Christine had DNA matches to both of Caroline’s parents, and Caroline had no full siblings. I searched in the family for double marriages between her parent’s families but did not find any. Christine’s DNA cm fit nicely with Caroline as her great grandmother, and like John, was the right age and in the right place at the right time.

Christine was very happy with our research findings and pleased to be able to build back her family tree some more.