Valentina’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Valentina’s paternal grandfather

Valentina reached out for help with identifying her paternal grandfather. Her father, John William Derksen, had never known who his biological father was, and she was eager to solve a 92 year old mystery.

Valentina had done some good research already to get us started, and had grouped some of her paternal matches. All her matches from her paternal grandfather’s side were 162cm or less. She had identified a few matches from his side that were descended from a couple from Quebec, the Renauds, that were born in the 1830s. We both agreed her grandfather was going to be descended from this couple.

I looked at Valentina’s paternal DNA matches that were from her grandfather’s side and continued to sort them some more. One name that I kept seeing in the trees of some of the non Renaud matches was Vachon, or Morneau dit Vachon.

I knew the next step would be to look at the spouses of the Renaud couple’s children and see if I could tie matches in to any of their spouses’ families.

I noticed that their son Bernard Renaud had married a lady named Renee Morneau Vachon. There were a few sources that differed on Renee’s maiden name, but upon finding her baptism record, her last name was indeed Morneau Vachon. Most records had her with this last name or Morneau.

I started to build out Renee’s tree and found that Valentina had several DNA matches coming from both of Renee’s parent’s sides. She even had a DNA match that was descended from Renee’s sister.

Bernard and Renee were married in Montreal in 1881. They had several daughters, and 3 sons. However, by 1932 when Valentina’s father was born, only one son, John William Renaud, was still alive, so we knew he had to be Valentina’s biological grandfather.

Valentina was very pleased with my findings and even revealed that her father was supposed to have been named and baptized as William John, but it was changed at the last minute to John William- possibly as an allusion to his biological father’s name. She is glad to have finally solved her family mystery.