Tyler’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Tyler’s paternal grandfather

Tyler’s search is one that took well over a year to solve, beginning in 2023, but teamwork helped make it come together at last. It was full of target testers and surprises with each development.

Tyler’s father Daniel was born and adopted on the east coast of Canada. Tyler had done an AncestryDNA test in hopes of finding his paternal grandparents, and my friend and fellow search angel Katherine had been assisting him. She helped him find his dad’s biological mother Madeleine, who was deceased, but they needed help with Daniel’s paternal side. Almost everyone on Tyler’s paternal side seemed to be from Madeleine’s family.

Tyler only had one match Brad, at 180cm, who seemed like he could be from Tyler’s paternal grandfather’s side. They had no shared matches with each other! Tyler had messaged Brad, who shared that he was an adoptee too. Brad knew his biological family, but he was unsure which side of his family Tyler was on. He shared what he knew, and we mapped out his biological mother’s side, but with no shared matches, and not knowing if we were even looking on the right side of Brad’s tree, we weren’t able to get very far.

Katherine and I encouraged Tyler to have his father do a an AncestryDNA test, as it would split the matches better and potentially bring up some matches that were below 20cm for Tyler.

Eventually Daniel’s results came back, which helped split the matches into maternal and paternal. As suspected, Brad was a paternal match to Daniel. The bad news was that they only had very low matches in common, with the next closest shared match being 38cm! Most of the matches had very recent ancestry from England, Ireland, and the Channel Islands. We figured Daniel’s biological father was likely not from Canada or perhaps was a second generation Canadian.

Brad had also been trying to help out, and eventually his biological mother Anna appeared as a match to Daniel- at 825cm shared, much higher than we were expecting. Looking at their shared matches, it was clear there was a generation difference between Anna and Daniel, making Daniel a half uncle of Anna’s, not a first cousin.

While it was very helpful to know it was Anna’s side of Brad’s family we were interested in, we were now a generation up with the same problem- not sure which side of Anna’s family we needed to look at deeper. I noticed Anna’s paternal grandmother was born in England, and thought that the relation might be from Anna’s paternal side. We encouraged her to get someone from her paternal side to test and see if we were right.

Eventually Anna’s paternal first cousin Sam tested, and to their surprise, Sam was only a 400cm match to Anna, indicating they were not full cousins, but instead half first cousins. Anna and Sam shared a grandmother, but Sam had matches to their grandfather’s family, and Anna did not. Sam was not a match to Daniel or Tyler.

Although this was understandably shocking for the family, it helped us make some progress with Tyler’s search. Anna eventually was able to tell that Daniel was on her paternal side, which meant that Anna’s dad and Daniel were paternal half siblings to each other. This made sense as they were about a decade apart in age and born in the same province.

However, Anna’s father now had an NPE and no idea who his biological father was. His mother had been dead for several decades, and the matches across all the DNA sites were too low to help.

Anna’s half first cousin Sam’s father had passed away too, but Sam’s mother was still alive and well in her nineties. Sam asked his mother for names of men that his grandmother may have had an encounter with.

She did provide a possible name of the man, but of course, the last name was not too uncommon, and it took some research to find the correct man. He had been born in the Channel Islands, which fit with Tyler and Daniel’s low paternal matches and several of them being from there or having ancestry from there. He came to Canada as a young man and lived the rest of his life here. Tyler built out his family tree many generations back, and amazingly, ThruLines worked as it should, and we were able to confirm that Daniel had matches, though distant, through several different ancestor lines of this man.

After over a year, Tyler and Daniel finally had some answers and now know more about their paternal side of the family. This truly was a team effort and I am grateful for all the testers and everyone who helped with this search.