Jared’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goals: Identify Jared’s biological father, and Jared’s biological maternal grandparents

Jared reached out earlier for help with his searches. He was adopted, and had two mysteries he was hoping to solve: the identity of his biological father, and the identity of his biological mother Lisa’s own biological parents, as she had been adopted as well. 

Jared’s biological mother Lisa had passed away several years ago, but he knew the last name Jervais might be relevant to her side as that was her birth last name. 

Part 1: Jared’s biological father

Jared had tested on AncestryDNA as well as uploaded to Gedmatch so after a quick look at his results on both sites, I was able to confirm which parent side on Ancestry was maternal and which parent was paternal. I decided to start with Jared’s paternal side as his paternal matches were very good and it seemed like the easier side to start with. 

Jared’s paternal side was entirely Irish, and I could tell most of the matches on this side were either still in Ireland or had very recent Irish heritage. His paternal matches sorted nicely into two groups, representing each of his paternal grandparent’s sides. Jared’s top paternal match Kayla was close to 1200cm and was part of both groups, but she only had her paternal side of her tree filled out and it was looking like that was not the side we needed. 

After building out the trees of the paternal matches, I quickly found a union couple connecting the two groups; a couple born in 1885 and 1901. They had several children who had come to Canada, which was good to see, so I started building out the tree some more. 

Eventually, I found an obituary of one of the children of the union couple that named Kayla as a grandchild, so I figured this was definitely the branch of interest. Looking at Kayla and Jared’s shared matches, it actually seemed like Jared was a half uncle of hers, not a first cousin, as Jared was matching most of the matches roughly double what Kayla was. 

Concurrently with the search for Jared’s maternal grandparents, Jared ended up reaching out to Kayla and her mother and explaining the search. Kayla’s mother Beatrice agreed to test to help determine if Jared was her half brother or her full nephew. Beatrice’s AncestryDNA results eventually came back a month later, and I reviewed her matches, which confirmed Jared and Beatrice were half siblings as he had no DNA from Beatrice’s mother’s side. Jared’s biological father’s identity was confirmed, although he was unfortunately deceased.

Part 2: Jared’s maternal grandparents

Jared’s maternal matches split into three main groups: The Thornton match group, the Jarvis match group, and the Rutherford match group. 

We figured Jarvis was likely an alternate spelling of the birth last name Jared had for his biological mother Lisa, which was Jervais.

The Thorntons were the group with the closest matches, so I started with that match group first and began to build out the trees of these matches. I found the common ancestor couple within the match group very quickly, and identified their son that had to be Jared’s maternal grandfather. This was due to Jared having a half first cousin match who matched him higher than other matches, including first cousins once removed, did from other branches- this half first cousin match was also Jared’s top maternal match overall.

I next focused on the Jarvis group. The common ancestor couple of this match group were much further back, having been born in 1857 and 1875 respectively. They had seven children that lived to adulthood, and I figured one of these children was going to be one of Lisa’s maternal grandparents, but I got stuck at this part due to no apparent matches coming in from any of the spouses of the seven Jarvis children. I wondered if there was an adoption or NPE situation that was complicating things. 

As I searched, Jared had applied for his biological mother Lisa’s non-identifying information about her own bio mother. He received his information back fairly quickly, which helped greatly to put the Jarvis family puzzle pieces into place. It gave the ages of Lisa’s biological mother as well as her maternal grandmother, and having built the Jarvis tree out extensively already, it was very easy to see where they fit and who they were. 

The last unknown is Lisa’s maternal grandfather, who was not married to her maternal grandmother and must be from the Rutherford match group. Matches from this group are very low- 46cm and below- although we are hopeful better matches will eventually appear and help solve the final mystery. 

Jared is very pleased to have most of his biological family tree filled out