Gary’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Gary’s biological father

Gary’s half sister Jade, who I helped earlier this year, referred him to me after they met on AncestryDNA and discovered they were maternal half siblings. Gary wanted to know who his biological father was, and I was happy to help. Gary knew his own birth name, Stanley, as well as an estimated age for how old his biological father would be based on his biological mother’s age.

Gary invited me to his AncestryDNA results as a collaborator, and I got to work. His paternal matches split into two main groups, which was a good sign, as I figured each group represented one of his paternal grandparents.

One of the match groups was connected by the last name Clanton, while the other was connected by the last name Lonsdale. I started working on the Clanton matches first because Gary’s closest paternal match, “J.B.,” who matched him at around 1,000 cM, was part of this group. J.B. didn’t have a tree, but I was able to figure out who he was using his profile information and how he matched other shared matches.

Once I started building out the Clanton family tree, things started to come together pretty quickly. Gary’s matches were quite decent, and many of them had good trees. I found the most recent common ancestors between J.B. and another match, a couple who were born around 1900. I figured Gary’s biological father was likely going to be a grandson of this couple.

The couple only had two daughters, and one of those daughters was the mother of J.B. I quickly realized that J.B. had to be a half uncle of Gary.

J.B. only had one sibling, a brother named Stanley, who was the right age to be Gary’s biological father. We figured Gary’s birth name was likely given to him after Stanley. I then realized that Stanley must have had an NPE, and that his biological father was a man from the Lonsdale family.

Gary is very pleased to finally know who his biological father is and looks forward to learning more about the family in the future.