Caroline’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Caroline’s biological parents

Caroline is an adoptee who reached out earlier this year for help with her search. She knew when and where she was born, but had no other details besides that. Caroline had done an AncestryDNA test and had applied for her adoption information when I began helping her out.

Caroline added me as a collaborator to her AncestryDNA results and I got to work. She was 96% French, with deep roots in Quebec on both sides of her biological families. Luckily, her parent sides were very distinct and they were easily separated into several groups.

Caroline had a good amount of matches on both sides and many had decent trees, so I picked the Parent 1 side to start with. The common last name of this group was long and distinct, although for pseudonym purposes in the blog, I’ll call it Charbonneau. A few matches on this parent side, including two that were second cousins once removed to each other, helped me find the sibling set that I knew one of Caroline’s parents was from.

However, as it often goes, the family was large and there were six girls and four boys. Only one had a descendant that had tested, so we were still between nine possibilities. Caroline did not yet know her birth last name, so we were not sure if this was her paternal or maternal side.

With this side as complete as it could be for the moment, I switched to the Parent 2 side, which was a little more difficult as less matches had trees on this side. I was still able to find the common last names fairly easily on this side, the main one being Lafreniere, and finding the union couple that I figured was one set of Caroline’s grandparents wasn’t too hard. But the small northern Ontario town that these folks all lived in did not have obituaries online, and so once again I was a bit stuck.

While Caroline waited for her information to arrive back, one of her relatives, Allain, on the Charbonneau side found her Facebook search post and decided to do an AncestryDNA test. His niece had already done a test and had thus ruled out Allain’s father as a possible parent since she was matching in the first cousin once removed range, but Allain was eager to help and see where Caroline fit into his family.

Once his results were back (and he was matching as a first cousin as expected), Allain contacted me and asked to see the private research tree I had made for Caroline. I sent him an invite. He also shared that out of his three uncles, only one was the right age and medically able to be Caroline’s biological father. He didn’t know of any of his aunts that had placed a child for adoption, so we thought, tentatively, that the Charbonneau side might be Caroline’s paternal side.

As he looked at the tree I had made, he recognized the Lafreniere name on Caroline’s Parent 2 side. It turned out that one of Allain [and Caroline’s] first cousins on the Charbonneau side had married a lady named Ivy, who was the grandchild of the couple I suspected was Caroline’s grandparents on her Parent 2 side.

Allain reached out to Ivy, and it turned out that she knew of Caroline and had been searching for her for over a decade! She knew her aunt had placed a daughter for adoption. With this as well as some additional information, we now knew that the Lafreniere side was Caroline’s maternal side. The Charbonneau side was her paternal side, and the uncle that Allain had mentioned was indeed Caroline’s biological father. Although both her bio parents have passed away, Caroline was very happy to have her biological family identified and looks forward to getting to know her newfound cousins and other relatives.

Thanks to cousin Allain for his help with Caroline’s search! It’s always very nice when bio family members want to help out.