Moira’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Moira’s biological father

Moira reached out for help recently with finding her biological father. She was adopted and had already found her biological mother, but needed help with her paternal side. She had done an AncestryDNA test and sent me a collaborator invite so I could get started.

Since Moira knew her maternal side already, it was easy to see which matches were from her paternal side. All paternal matches were under 200 centimorgans, and I sorted them into three groups. I then looked at matches who had family trees to find the common family last names of each group:

• The MacPherson/Siverton group, which were mostly based in Ontario
• The Forrest group, mostly based in England
• The Timms group, also based in England

I decided to start with the MacPherson/Siverton group as this group had the most matches and the closest ones. It was easy to find the couple I needed to build the tree down from within the match group- they were born in the late 1800s. I started looking at their children and finding information about their spouses, hoping to find someone who had a spouse with the last name or parents who had the last names of the other match groups.

There were only six children of the union couple within the MacPherson/Siverton group. Of the six, only one had descendants that matched Moira. I started working on the children, going in order of age, and finding their spouse and the spouses’ parents.

The second youngest MacPherson child, Hannah, turned out to be the one with the connection to another match group that I was looking for. Hannah had married a man named Robert who was born in Ontario as well, but his parents were from England, and Robert’s mother’s maiden name was Timms- one of the names of the other match group.

After some tree building of the Timms family, I was able to see that Moira’s closest match in the Timms group was a first cousin of Robert. I knew I had to look below Hannah MacPherson and Robert to find Moira’s biological father.

Hannah and Robert only had two children- two sons, and both were still alive and in the right age range to be Moira’s biological father. I was able to find details and contact information about both men, and even photos of both for Moira.

Moira decided to reach out to one of the men that was either going to be her biological father or her uncle. She explained her search and how the DNA findings had led to him. He remembered Moira’s biological mother, as they had been in a brief relationship over 60 years ago. He was surprised but very pleased that Moira had found him. They plan to meet in person later this year, and Moira is very happy that her search for her biological father has ended on a positive note.