Yesterday, I wrapped up a project for a woman who was adopted as a child. She was looking for her biological father. My research began a month ago and mainly involved the state of Kentucky. She had a person in mind whom she considered a possibility but wanted verification.
I began my research with an empty palette. My goal was to come to a conclusion by following the DNA. I didn’t want to begin my research with the suspected 
individual.
After gaining access to profile on Ancestry.com, I was able to link her DNA to her tree and started building a tree. I began with her mother (whom she identified several years ago) and developed a comprehensive tree on her maternal side. Her grandfather’s name was Maxwell, a very common name in Kentucky. This Maxwell line has been traced to Herbert Maxwell (1382-1454), in Lancashire, Scotland.
One of her DNA cousins was a direct descendant of her great-grandfather. I clicked on this individual’s profile and sorted by shared matches. I then highlighted the star on the left, next to every match. This helped me to sort her matches (highlighted stars) were her maternal matches. The remainder of her matches, who did not have highlighted stars, were more likely to be on her paternal (father’s) side.
I then began the painstaking process of building family trees for all of the people who were suspected to be on her father’s side. I looked for common surnames and eventually, tied all of these trees together. This process can take weeks or even months. As I constructed each tree, I looked at the person with whom she shared DNA. I looked at the centimorgans
and then looked at the probable relationship. One of her matches was someone named Larry Webster. He shared 874 centimorgans across 41 DNA segments with my client. The above chart shows the possible relationships based on centimorgans. Based on my client’s year of birth and Mr. Webster’s year of birth, I knew he had to be her cousin. He was too old to be her brother’s son/grandson. With this information, I began looking at all of the male siblings in both his mother’s and father’s families. At this point, I had to expand the tree and develop a tree for Larry’s mother’s side of the family. As I began to do this, the DNA trees I had developed, started falling into place.
The final step was to connect my client (in her tree) as a daughter to one of Larry’s uncles, on his mother’s side. We chose the gentleman whose age was the closest to my client’s mother. As it turns out, this was the individual she suspected to be her father. In order to be completely certain, we must reach out to one of her half-siblings and see if they are interested in submitting their DNA. If so, their centimorgans will tell us if our hypothesis is correct. If it is not, we will likely move to one of this gentleman’s brothers.
Because we linked my client’s DNA to her tree as we began this project, Ancestry.com was able to sort through the tree and identify matches in my client’s tree with the trees of her DNA matches. When Ancestry finished this process, we had identified 186 shared hints. The photo on the left shows the number of shared hints. The image on the right shows exactly who the shared ancestor is and the relationship of the “cousins.” The image shown is one of my shared matches with a cousin. We share great-grandparents.
