Belle’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Belle’s biological father

Belle’s daughter Kenzie reached out for help with her mother’s search. Belle was born and adopted in Ontario in the 1940s. They had already found Belle’s maternal side, and her biological mother had been living in the USA when Belle was conceived. All they knew about Belle’s biological father was that he was apparently also an American.

Kenzie added me as a collaborator to her mother’s Ancestry matches and I got to work. Since the maternal side was known, it was easy to assign Parent 1 and Parent 2 to Belle’s maternal and paternal sides.

I could quickly see by looking at the matches and their trees that Belle’s biological father was definitely going to be American, as the majority of her matches were living in Kentucky or had ancestors from Kentucky. Belle had a lot of paternal matches! Her top maternal match didn’t appear until halfway down the second page of her match list.

Many of Belle’s paternal matches were descended from a couple named Charles Carter and his wife Rosemary from Kentucky. Charles and Rosemary had six sons together, and I could see based on the shared DNA to their descendants, as well as the age of the sons, one of them was going to be Belle’s biological father.

Five sons were alive in the year leading up to Belle’s birth. Three of the sons had descendants who had done a DNA test, and two of the sons did not.

Two of the sons’ descendants were not matching Belle in the centimorgan range I would expect to see if either of those sons was her father. However, the descendants of the third son, Ben, were different. Ben had two great granddaughters that had tested, and they were matching Belle closer than some of the grandchildren of the other Carter brothers who were one generation up from them.

Belle was matching Ben’s great granddaughters in the right range to be a great half aunt to them- in other words, Belle was a half sibling of their grandparent. I researched Ben some more, and discovered he had been living in the same city that Belle’s biological mother had been living in when Belle was conceived. The other two brothers that didn’t have any descendants that had done a DNA test yet had never lived in that city.

Kenzie and Belle are very happy to have their family mystery solved and look forward to learning more about their biological family in the future.