Della’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Della’s biological father

Della is a Canadian adoptee who reached out for some help with identifying her biological father. She knew her maternal family side already, but her biomom had passed away and she only had DNA results to go on.

I showed Della how to get me set up as a collaborator on her AncestryDNA results, and once invited I got to work. Della’s paternal matches were not super close, with none being above 180cm, but there were still enough matches with trees that made the search quick work.

I split Della’s paternal matches into three groups based on who matched who. From there, I looked through the trees to find the common last name of each group. I was able to find the common names for two of the three groups, but the third was hard- which wasn’t too surprising since all the paternal match groups were based in England.

I started to build the trees out for the matches of the paternal group that had the closest matches. The common ancestors for this group were born in the 1850s in England, so a little ways back, but it did not take long at all before I found the one child of theirs that had moved to Canada, to the very specific region of the province where Della was born. That child had a daughter of her own who married someone who had ancestors that were related to the second paternal match group, so I knew I had found the union couple- which were Della’s paternal grandparents.

The union couple had had three sons, all were still living, so I was unable to determine further via DNA who was Della’s biological father, since none of them or their descendants had done a DNA test.

I gave the three names and the family tree to Della, who eventually reached out to her family members. By chatting with some of her new relatives she was able to figure out which brother recognized the situation and was her biological father. She is very happy to know the identity of her biological father and looks forward to getting to know her paternal relatives.