Arnold’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Arnold’s biological father

Arnold reached out for help identifying his biological father earlier this year. He had already located his biological mother, but needed some help with his paternal side, which he did not have any information about.

I took a look at his AncestryDNA matches and he had already assigned them Paternal and Maternal sides. The maternal matches were much better, with there being a close family type match. As for the paternal side, they were all 166cm and below.

I got to work sorting the groups and building out trees of the matches. Amazingly despite the endogamous Mennonite lines, I was able to work back down the tree and I arrived at a sibling set that I figured one of Arnold’s parents was from. As I looked at an obituary of one of the siblings, I realized Arnold’s biological mother was named, and that I had actually been working on Arnold’s maternal matches. His Parent 1 and Parent 2 sides had been accidentally mislabeled. However, this was good news, because the paternal matches were much better!

I switched gears and looked at the actual paternal matches, and took a look at the close match. She had a big accurate tree and it was clear to see that she was going to be a paternal half sibling to Arnold.

After looking through her Facebook I was able to find her father’s name and presented the name of his biological father to Arnold. Arnold has made contact with his half sister and looks forward to connecting with more new relatives in the future.