Veronica’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Veronica’s biological father

Veronica reached out for help identifying her biological father. She was not adopted, but she did not know who her biological father was. Veronica had done an AncestryDNA test and also uploaded to Gedmatch, where there was a close family type match around 1800cm. She had not contacted the close match yet.

I started by taking a look at Veronica’s AncestryDNA matches and found that her paternal matches split into two main groups- the Newton group and the Sanders group, with no matches closer than about 400cm. There were a few matches part of both groups who had good trees, and I was able to easily see the couple that connected the Newton and Sanders families. Based on the estimated age of Veronica’s biological father, I figured he was going to be a child of the Newton/Sanders union.

I popped over to Gedmatch to take a look at Veronica’s close match, a woman named Rachel. I checked their shared matches and confirmed that Rachel was matching Veronica on Veronica’s paternal side.

Using Rachel’s email that was displayed on Gedmatch I was able to find where she lived and her Facebook page, which had a lot of public information about her, including her age and parent’s names. She was living overseas, but had been born in Australia like Veronica, and her maiden name was Newton. I was quickly found her parents and her father’s name, and her father was listed in the obituaries of the Newton/Sanders couple. So now we knew who Veronica’s biological father was, and that Rachel was a paternal half sister to Veronica.

Veronica was very impressed with my quick work as this search only took about half an hour from start to end. Within a day, she was on the phone chatting with her newfound half sister, and looks forward to connecting with the rest of her paternal family in the future.