Lara’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goals: 1) Identify Lara’s biological father 2) Identify Lara’s biological maternal grandfather

Part 1: Lara’s biological father

Lara reached out for help earlier this year with her searches. She was adopted and found her maternal side already, but needed some help with the paternal side. She also had a secondary search of finding out who her biological mom’s bio father was. Lara had done an AncestryDNA test as well as 23andMe. I started by looking at her AncestryDNA results and said I would look at 23andMe if it was needed.

Lara had some pretty good paternal matches, including a man in the close family range (1700cm), another man in the first cousin range (800cm), both with no trees, and many more matches 350cm and further. Right away I could tell Lara’s biological father was Italian, possibly born in Italy or for sure his parents were. Despite this, the matches were pretty decent, but I could also tell they were all from a very endogamous part of Puglia. 

Lara did some research alongside me for this search, and found on Facebook that her top match, Jack, had shared that he had discovered via DNA testing who his biological father was, but did not mention a name in his post. Jack was at least 20 years older than Lara, so we figured he was likely either a full uncle or a half sibling to her. However, if he was a full uncle, that would mean he had a full brother who was Lara’s parent. Possible, but not super likely since Jack was adopted. In addition, Jack matches their shared matches roughly the same as Lara did, indicating they were more likely to be half siblings. Jack had not been active on Ancestry or Facebook in over a year. 

I started working on the next highest match, Pietro, who had a distinct name which helped me find some family obituaries, which were in the city Lara was born in. Pietro was also about 30 years older than Lara so initially I explored the possibility of him being a half uncle, but he only had one sister. As well, like Jack, Pietro was matching all of their shared matches at roughly the same range, indicating no generation difference. Perhaps he was truly a first cousin. I started to wonder if perhaps we were looking for a man that was several decades older than Lara’s biological mother.

I built out Pietro’s family in a research tree, and found that several of his aunts and uncles had lived in the city that Lara was born in. But I was not sure which side of Pietro’s family Lara and Jack were on due to the endogamy and double relationships a few generations back on both sides.

I suggested Lara reach out to Pietro for some family info and to see if he knew how Jack was related to him, as that would help know how Lara’s was related to each of them. Thankfully, Pietro had corresponded with Jack before he had passed away two years ago, and he knew the relation: Pietro’s mom’s brother Geno was Jack’s biological father. 

This was very interesting to know as I had researched and treed so much more of Pietro’s paternal side, but now knowing that the relation was on Peitro’s maternal side, the other matches started to make much more sense, and I could see that despite the endogamy and the double relationships which are so common in Italian families, Pietro was correct. 

Geno had unfortunately passed away close to two decades ago, and had never married or had children of his own (besides Jack and Lara!). Although the large age gap between Lara’s biological parents brought up more questions, the DNA does not lie, and Lara was glad to have some answers about her paternal side.

Part 2: Lara’s maternal grandfather

After we finished Lara’s paternal side, we switched gears and focused on her maternal grandfather side. Lara’s biological mother wasn’t adopted, but she did not know who her biological father was. 

Lara had a half first cousin Mya whose mother was Lara’s biological mother’s maternal half sister, so that helped sort the matches nicely. Anyone who didn’t match Mya was from Lara’s maternal grandfather’s side. 

Thankfully, Lara had many matches from this side and they were all from families connected by either the last names Olsen or Leary. Lara’s top two maternal matches, siblings Jane and her brother D Olsen, connected the Olsen and Leary families, with their parents being the union couple. I figured Jane and D Olsen were going to be Lara’s great aunt and uncle, and a brother of theirs was going to be Lara’s maternal grandfather.

Jane and D Olsen only had one additional sibling, a brother whose name also with the first initial D- I’ll call them Daniel (alive) and David (deceased). The next question was, which brother had tested? Whichever one hadn’t tested was going to be Lara’s maternal grandfather.

D Olsen’s results were on an Ancestry account that had the username MOlsen007. Daniel had a wife whose name started with the letter M, and David did not. We reasoned Daniel had tested, and David hadn’t. Unfortunately, David had passed away, but we were still able to find some photos of him, and he looked quite like Lara’s biological mother. 

Lara was glad to have her family mysteries solved and learn more about her biological family history on both sides.