ENLISTING DNA ON YOUR FAMILY HISTORY QUEST

Welcome to the DNA Workshop! In every issue DNA adviser Karen Evans will be unpacking a reader case study, helping you learn how to use your DNA research at home. It’s time to unlock the story of your genes…

Karen Evans

Making DNA work FOR YOU

MADDY WRITES:

Dear Karen,

I wonder if my mother-in-law’s ‘Jo’ DNA problem would make an interesting case for one of your DNA articles?

Jo was raised by her foster mother. She met her birth mother and two brothers, and her birth mother always said that Jo and one of her brothers ‘Bob’ shared the same father and had Norwegian genes. I got them both tested on FamilyTreeDNA several years ago and the results showed that they did not share the same father. We continued the DNA search, tested Jo on Ancestry and added her DNA to a few more databases.

At some point we got in touch with her closet living match who was living in America and was delighted to hear from us as Jo was also his closest living relative. Unfortunately, he was also adopted and knew nothing about either of his birth parents. This whole process has been a bit of a rollercoaster for my mother-in-law. I would dearly love to be able to give her a name for her birth father as I think it will give her some peace of mind, but my DNA experience is limited and with no close matches I’m at a loss as to how to tackle this problem.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Maddy

KAREN REPLIES: With Jo’s permission, Maddy gave me access to her mother-in-law’s Ancestry DNA match list. Despite Maddy’s admission that she lacked DNA experience, she had already begun to separate matches into possible maternal and paternal lines. Jo’s halfbrother Bob had decided he did not wish to test with Ancestry but the databases he was on gave important clues on who wasn’t a match for Jo’s father.