Alessia’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Alessia’s biological parents

Alessia is a Canadian adoptee that reached out for help finding her biological families. She had her biological mother’s full name, and some decent non-identifying information about both her biological parents and their families. She had also taken an AncestryDNA test.

Alessia invited me as a collaborator to her AncestryDNA results and I got to work. Her matches split into eight distinct groups: five on her maternal side, and three on her paternal side. I knew which parent side was which because Alessia’s biological parents had distinct ethnicities described in her non-identifying information that aligned with her Ancestry results.

I decided to start with Alessia’s maternal side since she had more information to go off of for this side, and it was also not endogamous like the paternal side was. However, her match groups were all very small and it was initially a bit of a challenge to put together.

Alessia’s maternal match groups were as follows:

• Group 1: A small match group with only 11 matches, and the top match who was around 220cm only had his father in his tree. Initially I could not find the common last name for this match group.
• Group 2: The first Italian group, which was small with only 18 matches. The top match at 150cm, Nico, had an entirely Italian pedigree. I could not find the common last name for this match group either.
• Group 3: The second Italian group, small as well with only 12 matches and the top match in the group being 70cm. This group was connected by the last name Lombardi. Alessia’s top match (613cm) was actually part of both Italian groups, but was also adopted and had no knowledge of her biological families.
• Group 4: An Ontario based match group connected by the last name Robertson, which was Alessia’s biological mother’s maiden name. Top match in this group was 106cm.
• Group 5: Another Ontario based match group that formed a union couple with the Robertson group. The top match in this group was 103cm.

I decided to start working on the Lombardi match group first and seeing if I could tie in the other Italian group to it. I kept Nico from Group 2’s tree open in a tab as I explored the Lombardi trees. Pretty quickly, I found that one of Nico’s uncles who had the last name Caputo had married a woman with the last name Lombardi. From there I knew I had to downtree and tie in the Robertsons and the Group 1 matches.

The Caputo/Lombardi couple had had four children, and looking through trees I easily found that one of their daughters had married a Robertson. The Lombardi/Robertson couple were Alessia’s maternal grandparents (Group 1 ended up being Alessia’s maternal grandfather’s mother’s line, and the 220cm match was related through his father’s side).

I was able to find an obituary of Alessia’s maternal grandfather which named her biological mother and other relatives. From there, I found a close relative of Alessia’s biological mother on Facebook that Alessia reached out to. Not bad for about half an hour of searching!

This close relative was welcoming and helped Alessia get in touch with her biological mother within a few days.

Alessia’s paternal side was very endogamous from Nova Scotia and it was very challenging to build a tree and narrow it down due to about six families having many marriages between them for several generations. Thankfully, Alessia’s biological mother knew who Alessia’s biological father was and put them in contact with each other. Alessia is very happy to have found both of her biological families.