Cheryl’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Cheryl’s biological father

Cheryl’s search came to me a few years ago when her first search angel reached out for help. Cassidy had done some work on the search but was unable to continue due to personal health reasons so I took over the search.

Cheryl was not adopted, but she did not know who her biological father was. She had been given the name of her bio father: “Clement Cloutier” but was not sure if this name was accurate.

Cheryl had done AncestryDNA testing so she invited me to her results and I took a look at things. Her paternal side was indeed French Canadian and she had a lot of matches, which was good to see. I started to group them and found that most of the paternal matches were related to either the Jubenville family or the Paquette family. I did not see the Cloutier last name anywhere in the trees of her matches.

Finding the union couple of these families was fairly easy as Cheryl’s closest paternal matches were descended from them- Joseph and Marie Jubenville. They were born in the 1880s, and I figured based on that as well as the matches, they were likely to be one set of Cheryl’s paternal great grandparents.

Joseph and Marie, like typical French Canadian families- had a lot of children- 14 of them; nine daughters and five sons. Five of these children had descendants who had tested and were not matching Cheryl high enough to indicate she was from their branch, so we could at least rule five branches out. However, that still left ten children!

I began to build out the spouse’s families of the Jubenville children as well as adding all the grandchildren of Joseph and Marie in. I also went further down Cheryl’s matchlist, trying to find the smaller matches groups that were coming from a Jubenville spouse’s side. Cheryl’s first match that wasn’t from the Jubenville/Paquette side was fairly low, at only 61cm, and I wasn’t able to find the common last names of this match group due to the matches being so few and so distant in this group. 

Time went by and I was not finding DNA connections to any of the spouse’s families. I was puzzled, and frustrated for Cheryl too since I knew we were pretty close. Occasionally some new matches popped up, but they were always from the Jubenville side. I wondered if one of the Jubenville sons had fathered a son that had the last name Cloutier, or if one of the Jubenville daughters had placed a son for adoption that then had the adoptive name of Cloutier. I just had a feeling adoption was the reason this search wasn’t coming together. 

During my earlier research, I had found that one of Joseph and Marie’s sons, Pierre, had married a lady named Georgette. After the 1931 census was released, I discovered that Georgette was listed in the 1931 census as being an adopted child of the parents she was living with. Georgette had not been adopted at birth, however- her mother had died young, and so she ended up being raised by some of her paternal family members. Around the age of 18 Georgette married Pierre Jubenville and then she eventually died in her late 40s.

As I built out Georgette’s biological mother’s side, I wondered if this was the right branch and the adoption was the reason the matches weren’t quite fitting into place. I found two matches that were second cousins once removed to Georgette on her maternal side, but they were such low matches to Cheryl (below 35cm) that I was not sure if it was just French Canadian endogamy doing its thing, or a genuine relationship through that line. 

I was also only able to find two children of Pierre and Georgette, and I suspected there were more, knowing the average size of French Canadian families. I wasn’t able to find Pierre or Georgette’s obituaries, if they had them, and found the two children through records only available on GenealogieQuebec.

After some more time passed, finally, the match we needed to bring everything together appeared. I try to check matches every week or two for my long term searches, but Cheryl happened to check in between my checks, and noticed she had a new top match on her paternal side and asked me to take a look. Right away, it was very clear that this new match was a half niece. This new match, a young lady named Jessie, had a maternal grandfather named Clement Jubenville. Clement was a son of Pierre and Georgette. Just like I theorized, Pierre and Georgette were the key couple. At last, Cheryl’s biological father had been identified. Unfortunately, he had passed away a few years earlier.

Cheryl reached out to her new half niece, as well as one of Cheryl’s probable half brothers on Facebook. He replied right away and was excited to have connected with another half sibling, and informed Cheryl that she had at least 10 half siblings through her biological father Clement. 

Clement seemed to be a bit of a mystery man and even despite now knowing his full name and death date, I was not able to find any records for him. We likely would not have found him without a descendant of his DNA testing, like Jessie did. 

After a few long years, Cheryl is very happy to finally have her answers, right before the holidays, and looks forward to getting to know some of her newfound relatives on her paternal side.