Desperately seeking Susan: Part 6

(Continued from Part 5)

Within a year of starting her DNA search for her biological family, Bonnie* matched two maternal aunts Bridget* (Part 3) and Grace* (Part 4), and her birth father (Part 5), and identified her birth mother Gail* (Part 5). She has now reunited with both birth parents in person.

In JANUARY 2018 Gail received her AncestryDNA results, confirming their parent/child relationship.

Gail in Bonnie's match list – DNA confirmation

Gail also matched Grace as expected, and asked for my help understanding what their match means.

Gail in Grace's match list – note her Italian ethnicity

In Part 4 Bonnie's search inadvertently revealed that her birth mother was a subject of misattributed paternity, also referred to as a non-paternity event (NPE). My working hypothesis was that Bonnie was the daughter of Grace’s paternal half-sister, who was unknown to Grace. (Incidentally, there was also a recent NPE on Bonnie's paternal side. Even if we could have identified the ancestors of her highest paternal match at 23andMe, a second cousin, it would not have led us to her birth father.)

Possible relationships for matches in AncestryDNA's CLOSE FAMILY – 1st COUSIN category include half-sibling, full aunt/uncle, full niece/nephew, grandparent/grandchild, and double first cousins sharing all four grandparents.

AncestryDNA does not list the half-sibling possibility under actual DNA results

People with any of these relationships share on average 25% of their DNA, and it is not obvious from shared autosomal DNA amounts alone which relationship is the correct one, so we also need to make use of any other information available, such as:

– We can exclude relationships that are not possible based on circumstantial evidence (ages and other tree data).
– We can analyze shared X-DNA at GEDmatch to check whether possible paternal half-sisters satisfy the requirement that they share their father's full X chromosome.
– We can analyze shared autosomal DNA at GEDmatch to check whether matches share fully identical segments, which double first cousins sharing paternal and maternal grandparents are expected to share.

Grace and Gail were born in the same area only four years apart and neither has any full siblings to my knowledge, so we can exclude the grandparent/grandchild and full aunt/niece possibilities. They have unrelated known mothers and don't share fully identical segments (established by a one to one autosomal comparison with graphics at GEDmatch), so we can also exclude the double first cousin possibility.

Gail and Grace share their father's X chromosome

A one to one X-DNA comparison at GEDmatch confirmed they share a full X chromosome, consistent with my working hypothesis and the only remaining possible relationship for their DNA match, paternal half-sisters. Furthermore, their shared matches belong to the tree of Grace's known father Carlo* Jr, indicating that they are both his biological daughters.

Gail's biological father was not the person she thought it was, and none of her parents are alive to ask about it. It is a hard pill to swallow. I can explain what the DNA is saying, but any new information revealed must ultimately be processed emotionally by those affected in their own time.

*This is a true story. I have permission to blog about the people who asked me for help but have not used their real names for the sake of their privacy. I have tried to limit my writing here to information pertinent to their DNA searches, but have shared other details I found with them in tree format.

{Related resources can be accessed via ISOGG's Wiki page on DNA testing for adoptees.}

(Continued in Postscript)

Desperately seeking Susan: Part 5

(Continued from Part 4)

Holy smokes!

Bonnie's* birth father had already tested with AncestryDNA, and he definitely wasn't Italian (remember my working hypothesis that Bonnie's Italian DNA came from her maternal grandfather Carlo* Jr, Grace's* father and Bridget's* paternal half-brother). His family was from North Carolina and Tennessee. To my horror, I woke up to discover that in her excitement Bonnie had made contact with his daughter (the match admin) immediately, before I had a chance to research him. Fortunately my panic was unfounded as he and his family took the news remarkably well and have been kind and receptive.

In SEPTEMBER 2017 Bonnie met with her birth father and paternal siblings in person.

Unfortunately her father couldn't remember much from the time of Bonnie's birth, but he did think of one person who might be Bonnie's birth mother. Her first name was Sue. We tried to find Sue by name alone, but that is easier said than done when more than forty years have passed and her surname could have changed more than once since then. I realized fairly quickly it wasn't going to work, and she may not even be Bonnie's birth mother anyway. After the excitement had worn off, it was back to the DNA drawing board for me.

Hmmm

Bonnie's closest match in her maternal grandmother's line (i.e. not shared with her father or maternal Italian matches) only shared 70 cM at AncestryDNA. Her test was managed by someone else, and she didn't have any ancestry information visible on her profile. To make matters worse, based on their shared matches she appeared to share French Canadian ancestry with Bonnie, which means endogamy, which means she could be even more distantly related than the shared cM suggested due to multiple connections.

The French and Polish matches had ties to Massachusetts, the French part came from Canada before that, and the Polish part came from recent immigrants. They came in the 19th and early 20th centuries to work in the area's thriving jute mills. Ironically, along with Irish immigrants, they gave New England a strong Roman Catholic presence. (According to Bonnie's non-identifying information, her birth mother was Roman Catholic.)

I was not optimistic about finding Bonnie's birth mother. I kept plugging away at Bonnie's Massachusetts matches on and off, thinking it was impossible but going through the motions anyway. I gave up a few times, checking Bonnie's AncestryDNA match list every day for a new close match that would put me out of my misery.

I worked all the clues the matches offered, grouped the matches based on shared matches, built trees for them, and found shared ancestors with shared matches for a few (this process is called tree triangulation or pedigree triangulation). I added all the bits and pieces I could find to separate "islands" for connected matches in my single research tree space – puzzle pieces of Bonnie's own family tree.** I built the lines of shared ancestors forward and looked for any connection to the other puzzle pieces or to Albany, NY. Working backwards most shared ancestors with Bonnie would have lived in the old countries, which often makes the task of finding connections impossible, and working forwards many tree lines fizzled out as people left Massachusetts for greener pastures and their trail went cold.

One day, while working on a French Canadian branch I had previously thought too close to the 70 cM match for their shared DNA, I happened upon an obituary dated 1959 some kind soul had uploaded to their public tree which mentioned a surviving son who then lived in Albany, NY. Other sources revealed he was married to a woman of Polish descent. Paydirt.

I used obituaries, city directories, newspaper articles, and other sources of information on living people to flesh out his children and grandchildren. One of his daughters, who was a toddler in Massachusetts in the 1940 census, had a daughter Gail* who fit the description of Bonnie's birth mother recorded by the adoption caseworker. Her first name wasn't in the same vicinity of the alphabet as Susan, but Bonnie's birth father confirmed he had in fact known someone with her name. To my amazement, based on shared ancestors in multiple lines and circumstantial evidence, that 70 cM match I once scoffed at appeared to be Bonnie's full second cousin once removed (which is statistically possible). Her grandmother was the sister of the man who had moved with his family to Albany, NY by the 1950s, now believed to be Bonnie's great-grandfather.

In NOVEMBER 2017 Bonnie wrote a letter to her putative birth mother Gail and received a prompt reply confirming that she was in fact the right person, and she was happy to be found. Their relationship has been confirmed by further DNA evidence, and Bonnie will soon be reunited with her birth mother in person.

Birth parents and siblings are not always happy to be found. Bridget's and Bonnie's searches had many twists and turns, but the responses and assistance from members of their biological family including Grace, who tested and shared her DNA data, have more than made up for it.

*This is a true story. I have permission to blog about the people who asked me for help but have not used their real names for the sake of their privacy. I have tried to limit my writing here to information pertinent to their DNA searches, but have shared other details I found with them in tree format.

**I build private and unsearchable speculative research trees on Ancestry's website. More often than not I can find the information I need to build trees for matches without anyone contacting them, which is a frustrating and risky process. I usually temporarily add a match as a new child of any existing person in the tree, then edit relationships in their profile removing the temporary relationship without removing any people from the tree overall. Later on I can link them up to the puzzle wherever they actually fit. I use two different symbols in the name suffix field to denote shared ancestors and paths to them.

{Related resources can be accessed via ISOGG's Wiki page on DNA testing for adoptees.}

(Continued in Part 6)

Desperately seeking Susan: Part 4

(Continued from Part 3)

GEDmatch one to one
autosomal and X-DNA comparison tools

Grace* and her paternal half-aunt Bridget* shared 10% more autosomal DNA on GEDmatch than AncestryDNA (737 cM versus 673 cM) as a result of different matching algorithms. They did not share any X-DNA, which is consistent with their relationship as Grace's paternal X-DNA came from her father's mother and not her father's father who was Bridget's father. (I already knew from the 23andMe chromosome browser that Bridget and Bonnie* did not share any X-DNA either.)

GEDmatch autosomal comparison
showing position only

Grace and Bonnie shared even more than that, a whopping 964 cM autosomal DNA plus a significant X-DNA match of 76 cM covering about 39% of one X chromosome. Grace did not know any sisters but was open to the possibility that one existed and Bonnie was her father's child.

Their match did not meet the matching criteria for paternal sisters however, which include sharing their father's full X chromosome (fathers only have one to pass on, while mothers pass on half of their two in a recombined mixture). Grace's father Carlo* Jr was the only child of both his Italian immigrant parents and had no full siblings, so Bonnie could not be her full paternal first cousin either. The only relationship that made sense was that Bonnie was Grace's half-niece, with a paternal half-brother of Grace's being Bonnie's father of Italian descent. Bonnie would then be Bridget's paternal half grand-niece, which also fit their shared DNA.

Not so fast.

Put simplistically, males only inherit X-DNA from their mothers and pass all of it on to their daughters only, while females inherit X-DNA from both parents and pass some of it on to all their children.** Grace’s paternal X-DNA came from her paternal grandmother and her father only passed this on to his daughters including Grace, who passed some of it on to their children. This suggested that Bonnie was the daughter of Grace’s paternal half-sister not her paternal half-brother. We can't generally tell much from the absence of an X-DNA match further out, but Bridget and Bonnie's lack of an X-DNA match was consistent with this working hypothesis.

GEDmatch X-DNA comparison showing graphics and positions

Bonnie's non-identifying information in respect of three grandparents was suddenly invalid. Bonnie's birth mother was of French, Polish, and Italian descent, while her birth father was not Italian at all (remember her ethnicity estimate did not support more than one Italian grandparent). The identity of her birth parents, including Grace's half-sister, was still unknown and we would need more clues to find them.

In JULY 2017 Bonnie announced with great excitement that her AncestryDNA results were in, and she had a direct hit. A parent match.

*This is a true story. I have permission to blog about the people who asked me for help but have not used their real names for the sake of their privacy. I have tried to limit my writing here to information pertinent to their DNA searches, but have shared other details I found with them in tree format.

**Some useful X-DNA inheritance charts have been published by Blaine Bettinger and Debbie Parker Wayne.

{Related resources can be accessed via ISOGG's Wiki page on DNA testing for adoptees.}

(Continued in Part 5)

Desperately seeking Susan: Part 3

(Continued from Part 2)

23andMe has a chromosome browser
that enables us to view shared DNA segments.

In FEBRUARY 2017 Bridget* gained a new close match at 23andMe. Bonnie* is an adoptee born 17 years later in 1974 in the Albany, NY** area where Bridget's Italian paternal family lived. Based on autosomal DNA statistics and other factors including ages, the most likely relationship for their shared DNA amount of 447 centiMorgans (cM) was a first cousin once removed (a child of one of Bridget's first cousins) or another half grand-niece (a grandchild of one of Bridget's half-siblings). Apart from Bridget, Bonnie only had one other close match at 23andMe sharing 297 cM who has a very common name and did not provide enough information to identify his ancestors.

At Bridget's request I invited Bonnie to view the paternal research tree I had made for Bridget's search, as that seemed to be the side they were related on. I asked that Bonnie contact me directly for any further assistance, as helping people search for biological family via third parties has not always worked out well for me in the past. (I need to hear from them that they are ready to search. I also need to know they will obtain and share all the information they are legally entitled to, and whether anyone else is helping them, to avoid unnecessary effort.) In the meantime, I started to help identify the biological ancestry of several other people with unknown ancestry who tested and showed up in Bridget's match lists, which have to date included another adoptee and two children of deceased adoptees.

Bonnie's top matches at 23andMe

By MAY 2017 Bonnie was ready to uncover her origins, whatever they may be. She asked me to help with her birth parent search and shared her non-identifying information and 23andMe results with me. She also uploaded her raw 23andMe data to FTDNA and the recently launched MyHeritage DNA for free and at my suggestion ordered another test from AncestryDNA to improve her chances of critical close matches. (Bonnie had already uploaded to GEDmatch, where she matched Bridget and Bridget's paternal half-niece Grace* who had tested with AncestryDNA.)

Bonnie's non-identifying information included information about her birth parents' ages, appearance, health and family circumstances at the time of Bonnie's birth, and some ethnicity details. The birth mother was young and unmarried and unable to support a child. She informed the adoption caseworker that her mother was of French and Polish descent and her father had some Native American ancestry, and that the birth father was much older and of Italian descent. (Her connection to Bridget and Grace, who share an Italian line via both their fathers, therefore appeared to be via Bonnie's father.)

I compared Bonnie's Ancestry Composition with
her non-identifying information and matches.

Her 23andMe Ancestry Composition corroborates her maternal grandmother's French (25.1% French & German component) and Polish (3.0% Eastern European component) ancestry. I concluded that she probably had at most one Italian grandparent, with the Southern European component lying between the 14.5% explicitly assigned to that region and 26.4% if one includes the Broadly European component (14.5%+11.9%). The rest of her ancestry, from at least two grandparents, appeared to be predominantly Northwestern European.

Bonnie had very few matches corroborating her French, Polish, and Italian ancestry, which is not unusual in respect of recent immigrant ancestry. The majority of her matches, including her mystery second closest match, appeared to have southern colonial ancestry.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch GEDmatch, I checked that Bonnie's parents were not related (no indication thereof, good to know) and ran one to one autosomal and X-DNA comparisons between Grace and Bridget and Grace and Bonnie (GEDmatch enabled me to view shared segments in a chromosome browser which AncestryDNA does not, and to compare raw data across testing databases). That threw a spanner (or monkey wrench) in the works.

*This is a true story. I have permission to blog about the people who asked me for help but have not used their real names for the sake of their privacy. I have tried to limit my writing here to information pertinent to their DNA searches, but have shared other details I found with them in tree format.

**New York is currently a closed state for adoption records.

{Related resources can be accessed via ISOGG's Wiki page on DNA testing for adoptees.}

(Continued in Part 4)

Desperately seeking Susan: Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

non-identifying information isn't always correct, especially regarding the birth father

In MAY 2016 we were stuck figuring out a connection to the new part-Italian 1C match, so it was time for Bridget* to send her a short non-threatening message via Ancestry (please don't do this for close matches without first taking screenshots of everything related to the match in case they get spooked and hide their information). I first helped her tidy up her Ancestry profile page to make it as welcoming as possible, including adding a profile picture, in case the match was the wary type. Once bitten, twice shy. It didn't help, even though she clearly logged in after the message was sent. There was no reply.

In the meantime, Bridget received her 23andMe results. Unfortunately there were no close matches there yet.

In JULY 2016 we decided to up the ante and Bridget contacted the match and various family members of hers on Facebook.

In AUGUST 2016 several of the match's grandchildren responded to Bridget on Facebook and said they would pass the information on to their grandmother and they would get back to her. Then radio silence.

In DECEMBER 2016 out of the blue the match accepted Bridget's friend request on Facebook then called her. She told Bridget that one of her paternal uncles (now deceased) had left Albany after a troubled marriage and had lived close to Jersey City under a different name and had a son and daughter by another woman there.

I found him in the 1940 census living in New Jersey with a wife and baby daughter, under his new name which turned out to be an alias he had used as a professional boxer.** His wife's first name corresponded with a name I had seen for his wife in a family obituary. I then noticed that his Social Security Death Index included a New Jersey Last Benefit address (a missed clue). His alias first name wasn't Ray, he didn't work in a grocery store, and he was quite a bit older than expected, but the DNA and location fit. I will call him Carlo.*

In MARCH 2017 Bridget made contact with some of Carlo's descendants, including a daughter Grace* of his only child by his wife in Albany (a son, Carlo Jr, now deceased). Family members said Carlo was a ladies' man and were not surprised to learn about Bridget. He had several children by various women, including a daughter born within a year of Bridget in New Jersey.

further DNA evidence – consistent with a half-niece

In MAY 2017 Carlo's granddaughter Grace showed up in Bridget's AncestryDNA match list sharing what we would expect for a half-niece. Bridget has also matched descendants of several of Carlo's siblings who have tested since May 2016, sharing what we would expect for their respective relationships. (Note that a new match to the sister of the part-Italian 1C shared considerably less cM and therefore excluded the low-sharing half-sibling relationship possibility.)

Remember Bridget's non-responsive part-Italian 2C match? We spent a horrible amount of time researching her family to no avail – it turns out that the match was someone else altogether with the same username on social media. Oops. They have the same first and middle initial and surname (one by birth, the other by marriage) and the same year of birth. Carlo's alias surname is the surname in her username. We eventually realized that she is actually Bridget's half grand-niece, a granddaughter of one of Bridget's other paternal half-siblings.

In JUNE/JULY 2017 Bridget met with a surviving paternal brother and sister (one brother and one sister had already passed). She is still searching for her maternal brother who was also given up for adoption. He has been eligible to obtain his original birth certificate from the New Jersey Registrar of Vital Statistics since January 2017.

*This is a true story. I have permission to blog about the people who asked me for help but have not used their real names for the sake of their privacy. I have tried to limit my writing here to information pertinent to their DNA searches, but have shared other details I found with them in tree format.

**BoxRec is a great source for boxer records.

{Related resources can be accessed via ISOGG's Wiki page on DNA testing for adoptees.}

(Continued in Part 3)

Desperately seeking Susan: Part 1

In MARCH 2016 I offered to help an adult adoptee born in 1957 in Jersey City, New Jersey who had done autosomal DNA testing with AncestryDNA. Bridget* had obtained some non-identifying information from Catholic Charities who had arranged her adoption, and had reunited with the family of her now deceased birth mother (named in adoption paperwork) who descended from Irish immigrants (corroborated by tree research and DNA results). She asked for help in CeCe Moore's DNA Detectives Facebook group finding an older maternal brother who had also been given up for adoption about 1949 according to her non-identifying information, as well as any paternal siblings. Her birth father was still a mystery, supposedly a man named Ray of Italian ethnicity born about 1924 who worked as an assistant manager at a grocery store.

Italy/Greece is now called Europe South

Bridget's AncestryDNA ethnicity estimate was consistent with the ethnicity information provided in her non-identifying information. The combined percentages for Italy/Greece (now called Europe South), Caucasus and Middle East comfortably represented one parent of Italian ethnicity.

As she did not match any siblings at AncestryDNA she uploaded her raw AncestryDNA data to the GEDmatch and FTDNA autosomal databases (both allow free uploads) and at my suggestion ordered another test from 23andMe in case any siblings or their descendants had tested there. This is called "fishing in all the ponds" in genetic genealogy circles.

Both my parents were born in England and Bridget has fewer AncestryDNA matches estimated to be 4th cousins or closer than me, consistent with recent immigrant ancestry. Her closest DNA match at that stage was a predicted second cousin (2C) with partial Italian ethnicity and no Irish ethnicity.

listed ethnicity regions include Italy/Greece but not Ireland

She has no visible family tree, hadn't logged in for over a year, and has never responded to messages. Bridget had found someone with the same username on social media who fit the bill in terms of general location and listed ethnicity regions. I built a tree for her and Bridget made contact with various family members, but we could not find Ray in her tree or figure out a connection to Bridget's other matches.

shared DNA amounts help us to evaluate relationship possibilities

In MAY 2016 Bridget gained a new match at AncestryDNA, a predicted first cousin (1C) with part-Italian ethnicity who also matched the part-Italian 2C.

She was 21 years older than Bridget and based on autosomal DNA statistics the most likely relationship was a high-sharing half-aunt or first cousin, or possibly even a low-sharing half-sibling (AncestryDNA does not yet have a chromosome browser and the match had not uploaded her raw data to GEDmatch so I couldn't check whether they shared an X chromosome as paternal sisters do).

I made a private tree for her based on a few clues in her Ancestry profile. Her father born in Italy in 1910 was from a large Italian immigrant family that settled in the city of Albany, New York, and matches she shared with Bridget had ancestors in their trees who lived in the same southern Italian region the family emigrated from. (Bridget has since been assigned to AncestryDNA's Southern Italy genetic community and more specifically the same Campania region.) Her mother had no Italian ancestry. I researched the match's Italian family, supplementing immigration and census records with obituaries, city directory listings and miscellaneous newspaper articles.** She had no obvious half-brothers and her father and four Italian uncles were all considerably older than our Ray and none of them worked in a grocery store. There was also no obvious explanation for how DNA from this Albany family ended up in Jersey City. Alas, Ray or someone like him was nowhere to be found in her tree and I started to have serious doubts about his description.

*This is a true story. I have permission to blog about the people who asked me for help but have not used their real names for the sake of their privacy. I have tried to limit my writing here to information pertinent to their DNA searches, but have shared other fascinating details I found with them in tree format.

**Some newspaper search sites I use are Findmypast, Ancestry, Fulton and NYS Historic Newspapers. Google sometimes brings up articles the other site search engines do not.

{Related resources can be accessed via ISOGG's Wiki page on DNA testing for adoptees.}

(Continued in Part 2)

We've come a long way, baby

[Subtitle: An overview of AncestryDNA's Genetic Communities for someone with predominantly British Isles ancestry, highlighting the benefit of testing multiple family members.]

I tested my DNA at 23andMe and FTDNA around 2010, when autosomal SNP tests with genealogy features first became available, and have subsequently tested at AncestryDNA. I was trying to figure out where my then mysterious father came from. In the early days my ethnicity estimate was 100.0% European, jokingly referred to on genetic genealogy forums as "boring vanilla". That's it. Accurate, yes. Helpful, no. I later got some geographical resolution in terms of European countries (more accurately speaking, regions labelled as countries). It was better, but still gave a rather fuzzy picture.

This week AncestryDNA released its Genetic Communities feature representing ancestral origins hundreds of years ago versus thousands of years ago to all AncestryDNA customers. I am pretty impressed with the results, which are consistent with what I have discovered about my ancestry to date.

My father came from Liverpool, not far from
where my mother was born near Birmingham.

1881 census record for my great-great-grandfather
James Burke, born West of Ireland

This is what my family tree looks like now in terms of place of birth, showing the nearest large city in the British Isles where known. Almost half of my great-great-grandparents are concentrated in the Midlands and North West England [AncestryDNA's English Midlanders & Northerners and Welsh & English West Midlanders regions]. My maternal grandmother was born near Dublin in the East of Ireland [AncestryDNA's Munster Irish region]. One of my paternal Irish ancestors, James Burke, came from the West of Ireland [AncestryDNA's Connacht Irish region] and his second wife Ellen Gilheany from whom my father descends probably came from County Leitrim as her maiden name is quite rare and specific to that county [AncestryDNA's Irish in the North Midlands region]. I don't know whereabouts in Ireland John and Elizabeth Monaghan came from or where John Pattison came from in Scotland. There is another Irish line and probably a Welsh line one generation further back (not shown in the tree below).

So what AncestryDNA Genetic Communities did I get? Testing several family members helps to provide a fuller picture. We have tested three generations in our family, including our paternal aunt, my sister and I, a maternal first cousin, and my sister's children. Taking into account our combined results, all my recent ancestral origins are covered excluding Switzerland which is not yet included in AncestryDNA's list of over 300 Genetic Communities. All three generations got the English Midlanders & Northerners Genetic Community. Our aunt got Scots while we did not and out of the two nephews tested at AncestryDNA only one has a Genetic Community. My nephews' South African father has British Isles and Dutch ancestry and he and one nephew did not get any Genetic Communities.

Our paternal aunt

Me (maternal first cousin also has the top two)

My sister

My nephew

Brother and father of above nephew