Isabel’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Isabel’s biological father

Isabel reached out for help with identifying her biological father. She had done an AncestryDNA test, and had a bit of non-identifying information about him from her biological mother (which ended up being completely inaccurate). She added me as a collaborator to her matches on AncestryDNA and I got to work.

Isabel’s maternal half sister had tested as well, so that helped split her parent sides nicely. I started to sort her paternal matches and got two main groups- the larger group of the two was connected by the last name Wyse and the matches in this group had better trees, so I started there.

Isabel’s top paternal matches were also quite good, and from looking at the shared centimorgans of the top two matches with the shared matches, I could tell that the top two matches were going to be a half niece and a half nephew to Isabel, and were half first cousins to each other.

The half nephew had a unique name and upon Googling him, I found that he had died a few years ago. I decided to research the half niece who also helpfully had a unique name.

The half niece’s maiden name was Wyse, which was encouraging and I used birth announcements from the Toronto Star to build back her tree. It became clear the half niece’s maternal grandfather was going to be Isabel’s biological father, but I could not find his first name anywhere.

While researching the half niece, I also was building out the Wyse family from the more distant DNA matches, but I was stuck on the generation that I presumed was going to be one of Isabel’s paternal grandparents. The sibling set that I figured the grandparent was from was very large; with over a dozen siblings, and I was not sure if Wyse was the biological father’s own mother or father’s last name.

I also took a look at the other match group, eventually figuring out that the common last name was Grant. I looked for a union couple with the Wyse family but was unable to find one.

I shared my findings with Isabel and suggested outreach to her half niece, Sasha, who would likely know the name of her maternal grandfather. I don’t often suggest outreach so quickly when assisting someone in their search; I prefer to find someone with no contact to matches (or as little as possible) but sometimes it is necessary.

Isabel agreed outreach to Sasha was a good idea and asked me to do it on her behalf, so I composed a friendly and factual message and sent it to Sasha over Facebook. Within a few hours, Sasha had sent an equally friendly reply and shared the name of her maternal grandfather- Raymond Wyse. Now knowing his name, I was able to find an obituary from a few years back, and Sasha confirmed the details from the obituary matched what her mom knew about him.

After a bit more research, I was able to connect Raymond to the Wyse family branch I had been building, with his mother being one of the many Wyse siblings. Raymond had an unknown biological father; but I was able to determine who his biological father was by looking at the Grant matches, now knowing that was Isabel’s paternal grandfather side.

Isabel was satisfied to learn the name of her biological father and thankful for my assistance. Sasha was also grateful for the information I was able to find about Raymond, as her family only knew a little bit about him.

Bonus: We also discovered after checking Isabel’s maternal matches, that her biological mother had an NPE. Using matches 99cm and below, I was able to narrow Isabel’s biological maternal grandfather as being from a set of three brothers born in the early 1920s. Additional testers (descendants of the brothers) would be needed to determine which brother it is.