Cyndy’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Cindy’s biological mother

Cyndy reached out to me via my friend and fellow search angel Sarah. Cyndy was adopted, and had already identified her biological father and his side of the family, but needed some help with her maternal side. Cyndy had her original birth registration, a lot of non identifying information, and had done an AncestryDNA test as well.

Cyndy’s biological mother had a somewhat common name of Ella Rogers, so she had not yet been found or located. I reviewed Cyndy’s non identifying information first, and then helped her add me as a collaborator to her AncestryDNA matches.

Cyndy had a lot more matches on her paternal side- her top maternal match was around 400cm and also was an adoptee. I sorted the maternal matches into 3 main groups based on who matched who. From there, I looked at each group to try and find the common last names of each group, but this proved to be a bit of a challenge due to the endogamy in the area of Nova Scotia where Ella was from, and as well, many of the matches did not have trees or profile information.

I also had learned from the non identifying information that Cyndy’s biological mother Ella had an unknown bio father of her own, and I realized that one or more of the DNA match groups could be coming from this unknown maternal grandfather line of Cyndy’s.

I continued with the DNA matches for a while, finding a pair of common ancestors for a few of the matches, but I wasn’t sure if the matches I was working on were from the unknown line or not.

I reread the non identifying information, hoping that there would be some key information in there that would help. I noticed that it said that Ella’s biological mother had moved to Ontario and been married prior to when Ella’s half sibling was born in 1941. Given the timeline, I figured I could find the marriage registration of Cyndy’s maternal grandmother, which would then lead to finding the rest of the family.

I searched for women born in Nova Scotia, with the Rogers last name in marriage registrations in Ontario for 1939, put a filter on for +/- 2 years, which came up with exactly one result: a young lady from Nova Scotia named May Ella, who was the exact age as Ella’s own biological mother. After looking into May and finding trees with the family on Ancestry, it was clear right away that May was Cyndy’s maternal grandmother. All the information and dates about the family given in Cyndy’s non identifying information was a match.

Unfortunately, Ella had passed away over two decades ago, but Cyndy was pleased to finally know more about her maternal family and be able to fill out that side of her tree some more.