Annabelle and Adam’s searches

*All names have been changed.

Initial search goals: 1) Identify Annabelle’s biological paternal grandfather. 2) Identify Annabelle’s paternal grandmother’s biological parents

Part 1: Annabelle’s results

Annabelle reached out near the start of this year for help with her search. Her late father, Ben, had been adopted in the 1960s. Ben’s biological mother, Netta, who Annabelle had already identified with her dad’s adoption records, was also adopted, in the 1940s, and was also deceased. 

It was a double search- identify Ben’s biological father, and identify Netta’s biological parents. For this search, I teamed up with my friend and fellow search angel Tess, who is from the same area as Annabelle and her family. Tess invited me to help since the DNA matches were providing a real puzzle to her.

Annabelle had done a DNA test with Ancestry, so she sent a collaborator invite and I got to work. She had a lot of paternal matches which was great to see, and they split into two main groups: the Turcotte group, and the Millette group. 

Annabelle’s mother’s maiden name was a Millette, and so Annabelle had many matches that showed as being both sides matches. I helped Annabelle upload to Gedmatch, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritage, and we ran the Are Your Parents Related tool on Gedmatch. The relation was thankfully quite a ways back, as it showed that Annabelle’s parents were not even distantly related enough to show on the tool.

The common ancestors for each match group were easy enough to find, but I was puzzled by there being only two match groups, and not three, considering we were trying to identify three of Annabelle’s ancestors. I started to wonder if perhaps two of the ancestors were related to each other.

Because of Ontario’s archaic adoption record laws, Annabelle could not get identifying information about her bio grandma Netta’s own biological family. The most that she managed to get the CAS worker to reveal was that Netta’s birth last name started with an S and had a g in it too. But we were not seeing a name in the trees of Annabelle’s matches that fit this criteria either. I wondered if there had been three adoptions in a row? I hoped not.

Annabelle had a good amount of information about her father Ben’s own biological father, and it seemed far too detailed to be made up. But again, no family in either the Millette or Turcotte groups fit the descriptions given, and so I was still puzzled. Was the wrong man identified, which so often happens?

Another friend and search angel, Kelly, came on board to help find Ben’s maternal half sister Ella that had also been placed for adoption by Netta. We thought perhaps Ella would have information about Netta’s biological families that could help with the search, or perhaps be willing to DNA test to help split Annabelle’s paternal matches further.

Thanks to Kelly’s expert non identifying info paper decoding skills, we found Ella within a few days. Annabelle and Ella made contact, but the conversation fizzled out shortly after, and Ella was not heard from again [until after the search concluded]. 

Months went by and it felt like we were getting nowhere. Nobody in either the Millette or Turcotte families knew of any adoptions either when Netta was born or when Ben was born. I worked the X DNA matches from Gedmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, which didn’t help much either. Nothing seemed to make sense. 

In the fall, Annabelle had a new top paternal match appear- a woman about her age in the 800cm range. This young lady we’ll call Yvette, she was a match to both the Millette and Turcotte families- her maternal grandparents were one of a few union couples I had found between the families. But we wondered if the 800cm match was a combination of a few different relationships between Yvette and Annabelle. Yvette was very helpful and joined our search group chat, eager to help. But we continued to still be quite puzzled by the DNA and none of the paperwork aligning at all. 

Eventually, Annabelle suggested that her only sibling, a full brother named Adam, do an AncestryDNA test as well. Since Adam would not get X DNA from his father, perhaps it would help with that aspect of things. 

Adam’s DNA results eventually came in, and to the extreme shock of everyone, Adam and Annabelle were only maternal half siblings, not full siblings like they had believed their entire lives. Adam was the biological child of their father Ben- but Annabelle was not. 

Now knowing Annabelle had an NPE, her matches instantly made much more sense. Her biological father was one of Yvette’s maternal uncles, whose identity was confirmed after a talk with her mother. Yvette and Annabelle were glad to finally understand how they were related and have already met in person. It also turned out that Annabelle’s parents were fourth cousins to each other which, in addition to the general endogamy of the area, explained so many of her Both Sides matches. 

Part 2: Adam’s results

Annabelle, and Adam too, were still eager to find out who Ben’s biological father, as well as Netta’s biological parents, were. Adam sent a collaborator invite to his results and we got to work. This time around, things came together within a week for all sides. More surprises were waiting in Adam’s results- at the top of his match list, his half aunt Ella had already done a DNA test at some point, so her results helped split things and help us easily see who was from Netta’s side and who was from Ben’s paternal side.

It turned out that Ben’s biological father was indeed the man that was described in his paperwork, and his name was known to Annabelle and her family before I had become involved with the search. He had died years ago, but it was nice for them to have that confirmed with DNA.

Netta’s biological parents came together fairly easily too. In Adam’s matches, he had a match group with the last name St Germain, which aligned with the hints the CAS worker had given. The matches in Adam’s results were quite good and we were able to narrow it down to a large set of over a dozen siblings- who were from a very different part of Ontario than where Netta had been born in.

After some meticulous research and looking at all the siblings closely, with many thankfully ruled out due to descendants testing, we found one of the St Germain sisters had a border crossing record in the year Netta was born in, crossing to visit the major US city on the other side of the border. We also found her living in a nearby town around the same time. She eventually moved back to her hometown after Netta was born and later married. We were sure this St Germain woman was Netta’s biological mother based on the age, location, and ruling out her other siblings.

As for Netta’s biological father, he ended up being a rather elusive Italian man. In Adam’s results, he had a match named Jill who we could see was 900cm to his half aunt Ella, and Jill was 50% Italian. After some investigating, it became clear that Jill was not a first cousin of Ella, but in fact a half aunt- meaning that Jill was Netta’s paternal half sibling! 

Annabelle reached out to Jill for more information about the Italian connection, since it was not apparent in Jill’s tree. Thankfully, Jill knew of it and shared that her biological father was a man from Italy and even shared his name and a photo of him with her mother. 

At last, we had finally found answers for Annabelle, and Adam. Despite some big shocks and surprises, everyone was glad to finally have the truth revealed.

Several people helped with this search, particularly my friends and fellow search angels Tess and Kelly, so thank you to everyone who assisted. This was truly a team effort.