Gordon’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Gordon’s biological father

Gordon’s search is a quick one that I started and finished while visiting my own biological mother in Australia. Gordon’s daughter Jamie reached out on her dad’s behalf for help and I communicated with her for the search.. Gordon had never known his biological father, but his mother who raised him did know some details- including a name “Ed Michaels” and that he was a soldier during WW2.

Gordon had done an AncestryDNA test and Jamie sent me an invite to her dad’s results. He was fully Polish on his paternal side, and Jamie told me that she had already done a little investigating of her own. Jamie had found a Michalowski family that had come from Poland to Manitoba, and some branches of the family had shortened their last name to Michaels, which lined up nicely with her grandmother’s memory. However, she was stuck at this point and not finding anyone with the first name Ed or Edward.

As I always do, I sorted Gordon’s paternal matches, and found that there were two distinct match groups: The Michalowski family, and the Hryniuk family. Both families had come from Poland to Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

I reviewed Jamie’s work so far and agreed she had found the common ancestor couple for the Michalowski family, using matches below 500 centimorgans. I figured, based on the age of Gordon and estimated age for his biological father, that we would be looking for a son of the Michalowski family that had married a daughter from the Hryniuk family, and their subsequent son would be Gordon’s biological father.

The Hryniuk family had fewer matches, with the top one in the match group at 217cm, but I was also able to find an MRCA (most recent common ancestors) couple for this match group quite quickly. I started researching the oldest daughter of the Hryniuk family, and found she had married a son of the Michalowski MRCA couple. I checked through all the siblings to confirm there were no double marriages, and there weren’t any.

This union of Joseph Michalowski and Barbara Hryniuk produced only two sons: Fernald Joseph and John Edward. This family was also notable because it was one of the branches that had changed their Michalowski last name to Michaels.

I looked into John Edward some more, curious about his middle name. Sure enough, several newspaper clippings and his obituary showed that he went by Ed and he was in the Navy during WW2. Upon finding a photo of Ed, it was clear there was a strong resemblance between Ed and Gordon. The DNA matches all lined up and fit nicely with Ed being Gordon’s biological father. Jamie was pleased with my findings and was glad her grandmother had accurately remembered his name. She looks forward to learning more about her paternal grandfather’s roots.