Judy’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Judy’s biological mother

Judy reached out for help with identifying her biological mother. She had already found and reunited with her biological father, but needed help finding her biological mother. Judy had her original birth registration that had her biological mother’s full name- Susan Cranston- and had done an AncestryDNA test as well.

Judy invited me to her AncestryDNA results as a collaborator and I got to work. Her maternal matches were decent and split into three groups: the Kerr family, the Elms family, and the Menzies family. No Cranston last name to be found- curious.

Judy did not have any super close maternal matches, with all being below 215cm or so, but she did have one match that was part of both the Kerr and the Menzies family groups, which helped me find the union couple between the families fairly quickly. As I looked at their children on publicly available family trees, I quickly found that a Kerr/Menzies child had married someone from the Elms family, forming yet another union couple. Based on the matches and their genetic distance to Judy, I figured the Kerr-Elms couple were going to be Judy’s maternal grandparents.

I used obituaries to find the names of the Kerr-Elms couple’s children, and sure enough, one of them was named Susan. After further research and delving into archival newspapers from the area where Susan lived, it appeared she had been married to a man with the last name Cranston prior to Judy’s birth, which explained why Judy had no genetic connection to that last name.

I wasn’t able to find Susan on social media or online, but I did find her husband and Susan’s siblings and provided their profiles to Judy. Eventually Judy reached out, and even met her biological mother in person. She is glad to be able to fill out that side of her family tree.