Ancestry DNA help - how to find relatives of ‘missing’ ancestor

[Ske]

Hi!

I recently got my Ancestry DNA results. Part of why I got it done was so I might have a chance of discovering who my maternal great-grandfather was.

My grandfather (I’ll call him Jim) was adopted in 1910 as a young baby. I have his birth certificate - his mother is listed so I’ve been able to fill out her branch of my tree (years ago I traced the descendants of the two other children she went on to have, and we all met up which was lovely). However, Jim’s father’s section is blank and in years of searching I’ve not been able to find a single trace of him.

I’ve checked through my DNA matches but I just can’t even begin to figure it out - has anyone had a similar situation? It’s for my own curiosity, I have no idea of the circumstances of Jim’s birth and wouldn’t try get in touch with anyone but I’d just love a name!

What I did with my matches was create groups corresponding to each of my great-grandparents and then try to add everyone to one of those groups based on which great-grandparent they were related to.

You can start by finding the people who have tree matches to you and adding them to the corresponding group. Then you can look at the matches that are shared with each of these people and add them to the same family group. By working your way through the shared matches with each person you should be able to add most of your matches to a group (at least the ones that are closely enough related to you to have some shared matches).

The ones that you can't match into a group are the people who may be related to your unkown great-grandfather.

(Caveat: this will be less straight forward if any of your great-grandparents are related.)

Are you on Facebook? Join the DNA Detectives group. Its a private group but free to join. They are really helpful, your query is a common one.

This is a useful too if you want to try on your own. .

The Leeds Method of Clustering DNA Matches - Dana Leeds

Well, he might have been adopted by a close relative, or possibly there could have been incest involved. However quite a lot of my ancestry is a right mess because my maternal and paternal ancestors came from the same area for at least 500 years. If yours came from Devon and Cornwall... Good Luck...

That is great - thanks so much for that! I will definitely give that a go. There’s so much information it’s hard to process it all! I’ve done a fair bit of family history but the DNA stuff is all new to me

Ah no, I’m in in Yorkshire!

We discovered he’d been adopted in about 2006/7. From census records I noticed that his mother would have been almost 50 when he was born, and her previous child had been born 10 years previously - my mum asked her cousins about this, and there was a very awkward conversation where they told her that Jim had been adopted as a baby into that family, apparently via an arrangement through the church. The cousins remembered his birth’s mum’s name, so I was able to use that to order his birth certificate.

When the 1911 census came out, he’s on there with the adoptive family’s surname but the word ‘adopted’ is on there too.

His biological mother was born in London and grew up there, we don’t know if she was living in Yorkshire for long before Jim was conceived/born, or if she was sent up here to give birth. It appears he was under 1 when he was adopted. She then moved about a bit, had 2 more children (and married their father years after they were born) and settled back in London, where she died in the 1960s.

@Trolleysaregoodforemployment I’ve not seen that, will check it out!

thanks all 😀