Reid’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Reid’s biological maternal grandfather

This search was a team effort with my friend and fellow search angel Tess. Reid was searching for his biological maternal grandparents, as his mom Colleen was adopted. Tess had identified Reid’s maternal grandmother already, in less than a day’s time, but needed some help with his maternal grandfather’s side.

Reid had done an AncestryDNA test so I took a look at his results and got to work. Reid’s mother’s maternal uncle had tested, which really helped sort sides as anyone who was a shared match with the uncle was from Colleen’s maternal side. 

The matches from Reid’s maternal grandfather’s side were quite decent and he had a few in the 800cm range. There were a lot of matches, so I started going through the ones who had trees and trying to find the common last name connecting them all. Initially, I was not really seeing any obvious last name, although I thought Swanson could be it. As well, all the closer paternal matches seemed to match each other, indicating they were probably part of two distinct groups and descended from Reid’s great grandparents. 

I went further down the match list to a lady named Joan at 118cm that Ancestry was predicting was a first cousin three times removed to Reid. She had a nicely built out tree and I was intrigued by the relationship prediction, so I started looking at her tree and at her paternal line that was living in the relevant area to this search. Joan did not have Swanson ancestors, but her paternal aunt had married a man with the last name Swanson, so I figured Joan’s aunt and uncle might be the union couple I was looking for. 

Sure enough, after grouping matches that only matched Joan, I came up with two distinct groups: The Acton group (Joan’s group) and the Swanson group (anyone who did not match with Joan, besides those descended from her aunt and uncle). Reid’s top two paternal matches, as well as their children and nephews who had also tested, were part of both the Acton and Swanson groups, but did not have either last name in their trees. 

The Acton-Swanson union couple only had three children: two sons and one daughter, and I knew that one of those two sons was going to be Reid’s maternal grandfather. 

One of Reid’s matches was a man named Mike Swanson who was in the right range to be a first cousin once removed, but he had no tree. After a little bit of researching and finding some obituaries, I was able to determine that Mike was the son of Lester Swanson, meaning that Lester’s brother Paul had to be Reid’s maternal grandfather. 

Paul had unfortunately passed away a few years ago, but the resemblance between him and Reid’s mom Colleen was uncanny. After looking back at Reid’s matches, I was able to determine that Reid’s top two matches were also children of Paul, as it was now clear based on their trees, both either had NPEs or unknown biological fathers. As well, Joan ended up being a first cousin twice removed, not three times removed.

Reid and his mom Colleen are very happy to have another side of their family tree complete and look forward to learning more soon.