When researching situations involving unknown parentage, it is important to start with DNA evidence. Look at the DNA and the matches to identify who the grandparents are. Do not concern yourself with their specific offspring who might be the father or mother you are looking for. In order to do this, there must be independent matches on the male side and the female side.
Researching For A Friend
I just finished researching for a friend. Her family has always been curious about her mother, Beverly’s biological father. Her grandmother, Nellie was six months pregnant with Beverly when she married in 1934. Over the years the family speculated that the father of the child was a man born in Italy. After some in the family took DNA tests and discovered no Italian heritage, the speculation continued and evolved to fit several scenarios that might have been possible. I offered to take a look and see what I could find.
Start With The LEEDS Method
The LEEDS method helps researchers group matches and divides them into four separate groups which are likely the four sets of grandparents. I used the LEEDS method to group her matches by the family they descended from. The LEEDS method was developed by Dana Leeds. It helps group DNA matches to determine the four sets of grandparents.
DNA Color Clustering: The Leeds Method for Easily Visualizing Matches
This is the chart I did with my friend’s DNA. She only has (so far) 10 matches who share between 100 and 400 centimorgans (listed here.) Her closest matches (the top two) she shares grandparents with.
Ellis/Marsh was an unknown part of her tree. The Crookshank/Allen part of her tree refers to her great-grandparents on her father’s side.
Research First
My next task was to do as much research on her entire tree. I wanted to build it out as far as I could in every direction. I started with her mother and father and worked back to her grandparents. I filled in the Ellis line as if they were grandparents and researched that line. When I was finished I understood her ethnicity estimate. She had relatives who immigrated from England, Norway, and Germany within the past four generations.
Success
My final step was to try to figure out how Mr. Ellis and Nellie met. I researched every census from 1910 to 1940 for each of them. I couldn’t figure out how they were connected. I looked for yearbook information and census information but could not put the two of them together. Finally, I discovered a 1925 Iowa Census with Mr. Ellis in it. I then began looking for Nellie in the 1925 census. For some reason, I could not find her in the 1925 census in Iowa. I looked more closely at Mr. Ellis’ family and BINGO…he lived next-door to Nellie’s parents. For some reason, Nellie and her bother were not listed but her parents were (they were the last two people on the page.) Perhaps they intended to list the children on the next page and forgot.
I began my research looking at the DNA and narrowed my search down to Mr. Ellis. I ended the journey with the discovery that Mr. Ellis and Nellie were next-door neighbors. Nellie had grown up with the man who fathered her daughter.