For the topic "Help" this week, I am going to write about how I helped an individual determine who his biological family is. Names have been changed to protect privacy.
A little more than 4 years ago, I received a message through Ancestry from a man I will call Timothy. Timothy found me through six closely shared DNA matches on Ancestry. One of these matches was shown to Timothy as his father, so Timothy was asking me if I could possibly help him identify this match. This match had a somewhat cryptic user name so we had to take a different track for awhile to see if I had this individual, that I will call James, in my tree.
So I told him that I would see what I could do. One of the matches was my Mom and another was a maternal cousin of hers which immediately helped narrow down which side of the family Timothy and James would be on. A third match, who we both tried to contact, never replied but Timothy did eventually identify her as another cousin through James' family.
A fourth match we never did identify. And a fifth match, I had already figured out that she did belong to James' Family as well. So knowing now that all 6 matches along with Timothy and I all do belong to the same family line, that I will call Kelley. We both also did try to contact James but received no reply. He had not checked into his account in over a year.
Timothy already knew who his birth mother was and was able to get documents from his adoption and from this estimated his birth father to be around 80 years old already. And with the exception of my mom and I, all of the matches lived in the same area of New York state where Timothy was born. The documents also told him that his birth father was never told of his existence.
I started looking at all of the men in this particular Kelley family who would be about the right age and also who may have lived in the correct area. I came up with 6 possibles. I sent these names to Timothy to see what he thought. After looking at these for a day or so, I could only see one very possible match. For me there was a catch, I had been in contact with this man years before when he wrote to my mom to ask for family information. We traded alot of family history with each other. So now I was wondering how to handle this so as not to invade James' privacy. But the way that I figured James' identity helped with that and went back to his user name on ancestry. He used his father's house number followed by the street name and then an abbreviated from of his city. These were found in a US Public Records Database on Ancestry. But too huge of a coincidence not to be true. So I decided to go ahead and let Timothy know.
So with the information that I had about James and the information that Timothy had about his birth mom, 2 + 2 = James. James and the birth mom were both school teachers in the same district but did not stay together. Both went on to marry and have other children.
After about a month, Timothy told me that he was going to approach James but he wasn't sure quite how yet. This ended our correspondence for awhile and then about 3 years later, I heard from Timothy. He told me how he finally met his other family. About a year and a half after we figured out that James was the one, Timothy reached out to his half brother's wife. They arranged to meet n New York State. Unfortunately, it turned out that James was suffering from Parkinsons and dementia and the family did not think it would be a good idea for Timothy to meet James. This was in 2019, right before covid hit, so a meeting with the rest of the family had to be put on hold until last summer when he was able to meet his half sister and family. A few months later, James passed away at the age of 83. But Timothy was very grateful that he now had this new family to call his. And I have a new cousin. It felt very satisfying to have helped Timothy connect to his long lost family and I am honored to have been a part of this happy story.
In another coincidence, my new cousin, I found, was also connected to me by his adoptive father, who I will call Ellsworth, who turned out to share a common ancestor with me also. One of Ellsworth's great grandmothers was a Mendenhall. I also have a 5th great grandmother who was a Mendenhall. They are both descendants of James Mendenhall who was born in 1718.
Please give credit and post a link to my blog if you intend to use any of the information written here. My blog posts are © Ann M Sinton 2022. All rights reserved. .
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