Posted By: Actor
A Genealogy Success ..... - 12/29/21 03:07 PM
After 3 years of diligent digging and 1000s of hours, I have been able to put a family together. This may seem simple, but it wasn't. A cousin had come to me and said his wife had been adopted at birth and she had no idea who her parents were, could I help unravel it. The first thing I told her was to get a DNA test from Ancestry. She did this.
Taking what little she could come up with I started digging. I believe it was someone on here that told me that Indiana had made it possible to get previously sealed information. My cousin had his wife apply for the closed information and after about 3 months received it. Since she had been adopted right from the hospital at birth, her adoptive parents were name as the parents. But... the birth mother's name was on the document. So, I went to work with that name. I was a member of Ancestry.com at the time so I filled out the info I had and sat back and waited... but just a few days when a half-sister made contact with me, and I was off and running.
No one still living had any idea who the father was. So, for all of that time I have checking, all of the cousins that come up with a DNA match. I had great success with those on the mother's side of the along with the half-sister. There were still about 25% of the cousins with matching DNA I couldn't connect. I sent many emails to those cousins asking for any information. Most... 75% didn't answer and those that did couldn't help.
I finally had about 5 or 6 names that gave great potential, but nothing I could hang my hat on or to pin the action on (being the sperm donor). I finally gave up a couple of months ago and told my cousin, I was defeated, and my Ancestry account ran out on December 22, 2021.
Christmas Eve morning for some reason, I have idea why, a name popped into my head about who the father could be. I turned on computer and I knew the name, because I had checked voraciously his brother-in-law. Since I could no longer use the full force of Ancestry, I could still plug information into her data base along with a couple of other sites I use a lot. I immediately started getting positive result. So, I spent several days, most all my waking hours. Checking data, building scenarios, going back checking the 25% of the DNA matching cousins and everything turned positive. I have been relating everything I was finding to the half-sister. Just today I found 2 compelling matches that make it 99.9% a positive match, with finding a half-brother.
I will be contacting cousin\s wife this evening, giving her the news.
Now if I could just break through 2 of my final brick walls I have been working for 58 years... I could die happy.
Garry-
Taking what little she could come up with I started digging. I believe it was someone on here that told me that Indiana had made it possible to get previously sealed information. My cousin had his wife apply for the closed information and after about 3 months received it. Since she had been adopted right from the hospital at birth, her adoptive parents were name as the parents. But... the birth mother's name was on the document. So, I went to work with that name. I was a member of Ancestry.com at the time so I filled out the info I had and sat back and waited... but just a few days when a half-sister made contact with me, and I was off and running.
No one still living had any idea who the father was. So, for all of that time I have checking, all of the cousins that come up with a DNA match. I had great success with those on the mother's side of the along with the half-sister. There were still about 25% of the cousins with matching DNA I couldn't connect. I sent many emails to those cousins asking for any information. Most... 75% didn't answer and those that did couldn't help.
I finally had about 5 or 6 names that gave great potential, but nothing I could hang my hat on or to pin the action on (being the sperm donor). I finally gave up a couple of months ago and told my cousin, I was defeated, and my Ancestry account ran out on December 22, 2021.
Christmas Eve morning for some reason, I have idea why, a name popped into my head about who the father could be. I turned on computer and I knew the name, because I had checked voraciously his brother-in-law. Since I could no longer use the full force of Ancestry, I could still plug information into her data base along with a couple of other sites I use a lot. I immediately started getting positive result. So, I spent several days, most all my waking hours. Checking data, building scenarios, going back checking the 25% of the DNA matching cousins and everything turned positive. I have been relating everything I was finding to the half-sister. Just today I found 2 compelling matches that make it 99.9% a positive match, with finding a half-brother.
I will be contacting cousin\s wife this evening, giving her the news.
Now if I could just break through 2 of my final brick walls I have been working for 58 years... I could die happy.
Garry-