I met unnamed female in November 2016. A fellow genealogist suggested this might be a good case for me to get started with.

She knew her birth mother but was desperately seeking connection to her birth father

Initially her ancestry test revealed 68 4th cousin matches or closer and slowly over time this number grew. We would excitedly email each other when new closer matches arrived. Each new match was matched to other matches and if we could we added the person to our online speculative tree and we worked out how the new match fit into the family.

Initially progress was slow and there was weeks with no new matches until we had a match appear that was in the 2nd Cousin range – Who was this mystery match? We had great excitement that there was no shared matches to her mothers side of the tree. For weeks we internet searched and stalked profiles on Facebook to piece together whom this match may be. We were able to start a speculative family tree for this match and slowly work backwards to see if there were links to the maternal lines – but nothing. We sent emails and messages and spoke to living family members trying to piece the puzzle together. There were many twists and turns and paths leading to dead ends, but we persisted.

We initally headed down the maternal side of the new matches tree but we couldnt get this information to gel with the trees of the other shared matches. So we moved onto the Paternal side. We built lots of lots of trees and finally found links back to similar towns in NSW. Was this what we were looking for???

Some matches clicked in, and others didn’t, we found some more matches that didn’t know their past family either, this added to the mystery and drove us on! (Still working on one of these mysteries – it involves an adoption following a shipwreck of the Cairns Coast, but that’s another story)

Now we are sitting at 292 4th cousins or closer according to Ancestry DNA, and we are close to finding her birth father, but again we are at a Brick Wall of a deceased brother whom we know nothing about, and the relatives seem to know nothing either. Its two steps forward and five steps back but each week we hope for new DNA matches to add to the story.

If you want to read her side of the story – I’m proud to share her blog with you – The Rollercoaster Ride Called Adoption : From the eyes of an adoptee

I hope that I am able to update this blog post in the future with more news.