Hi, my dad was adopted and I would like to see if people think my research method for finding his fa
Hi, my name is Mark Damian Ibison. I'm 50 and live in the southwest of England, but am originally from the northwest of England. My Dad, Paul was born in April 1944 and was adopted. He knew nothing about his birth mother apart from her last name (Johns), and absolutely nothing about his birth father. Whilst attempting to find his mother about 25 years ago, my dad found his sister, exactly 2 years his junior. Together they found their birth mother, Cecilia. She initially refused to see them, but eventually gave in. She always refused to see her grandchildren. She died in 2014. My Dad asked Cecilia about his father and she provided very scant and dubious information:
- His name was William Richard (no-one believes this to be 100% true)
- He lived with his Aunt in California, possibly San Diego
- He enlisted for ww2 and met Cecilia where he was initially stationed, somewhere in Lancashire, England - perhaps Blackpool, where Cecilia was working in a munitions factory.
Now to the point. I did a DNA test with 'find my past' a few months ago. Most of my heritage is of British/Irish origin. It came back with ONE solitary relative, a man (his initials - BJK) from the USA, a 5th cousin. I contacted him but got no response.
Subsequently, the DNA website changed this relationship to 3rd cousin, so we probably share great great grandparents. I reverse engineered BJK's family tree to look for clues. I identified his 8 pairs of great great grandparents, discounted those from wholly non British/Irish backgrounds, then looked for grandsons who were the appropriate age to have been in ww2 and enlisted before 1944. There were 6 - all from LDS backgrounds, mainly born or lived in Rexburg, Idaho. Two of the 6 have the grandfather Willard Ricks (1861-1940) (sounds very similar to William Richard!) who's father was Thomas Edwin Ricks. Finally, one of these two lived in California in 1940 and joined the air corps in 1942. There was a lot of US air corps activity in northwest England in the early 40s for aircraft delivery, preparation, maintenance and training.
Does this sound sensible to you or am I off down a rabbit hole?
Thanks!
Damian
Respuestas
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Hi Mark
Yes the methodology you are using is sound although, for accuracy, it would be better to work with a cM relationship calculator such as https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4
rather than just the predictions of the company ... On the face of it your conclusion seems probable but, to be sure your conclusion is sound, you probably need a bit more info.
Have you tried linking other matches to the research tree you built? Look at the shared matches with the match you based this research tree on ... can you fit them on to the tree? Do the relationships with you and your dad look probable when you add them to the tree. A great tool for you to use here is the WATO tool at DNAPainter https://dnapainter.com/tools/probability
When you are confident you have the right information, your Dad can apply for information from the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St Louis under the War Babes settlement. There is a specific procedure for doing this which I can give you.
Also, if you are on Facebook, you may be interested in this group - GI and Family international search ... https://www.facebook.com/groups/345051348885106/
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It sounds like you could be on the right path to find your grandfather. Can you contact the descendants of the men that could be the biological father and offer them a free DNA test to see if you match? The first step, is to locate the descendants. This is usually easiest if you can find them mentioned in an obituary. After you locate some potential descendants, reach out and let us give you some suggestions for how to contact them.
You will want to think about this and get some advice. When people reach out to quickly, they tend to say too much or say things that make the other party not willing to talk. We can give you some suggestions for how to make contact when you find the potential connections.
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Thank you Carolyn. I shall put my efforts into finding those descendents next and then be back in touch.
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Hi bjnl,
hmm, we share 40.31cM, so there's a very broad range of relationships it could be. I shall try your ideas. Thanks for the input.
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There are still several Ricks family members living in the Rexburg area. You might hit a wall this year with this , but I'm betting they have family reunions. Just sayin'.
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Better check i'm legitimate family first. Flying 21 hours to meet people i'm not related to would be a bit weak 😁
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For sure! You will want to try to figure out using WATO (What Are the Odds at the DNAPainter site) to see if your theory is true.
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Please watch this training video about WATO:
https://www.rootstech.org/video/introduction-to-what-are-the-odds
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Absolutely ... and as Carolyn Webber said previously, when you do have some certainty, be cautious in your approach ... come back for suggestions about next steps.
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Hi All, just thought i'd update where I've got to. I struggled to find any living people who I could definitely associate with my target families. However, I then found GEDmatch for the first time and gave that a whirl. This pointed me at my already found match BJK but also people from Tennessee with a cM match of just over 100. A good result? Upon inspection, the Tennessee group appears to have a lot of marriages between people with the same 2 surnames in the same 2 or 3 counties, so i'm thinking there's a high likelihood of pedigree collapse.
My current path is to try and link the Utah/Idaho families with the Tennessee side. I've got one person with a shared surname - William Jackson Stewart (1814-1884) from Overton, Tennessee who moved to Springville, Utah. I can't at present directly link him to my known DNA matches in Tennessee, but i'm trying!
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I am curious if you have made any progress connecting your matches from Tennessee to Utah/Idaho?
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Evening (here) Carolyn. Here's the short version. Through a convoluted route, I found a very helpful relative from Tennessee who has being researching her tree, and helping relatives for a very long time. It turns out that BJK was adopted and the Utah/Idaho side was not biological. So now i'm certain the answer resides in Hawkins & Sullivan counties in Tennessee. After an awful lot of tree trawling and local help, I've got a 'Johnny on the Spot' - right age, served with the air corps in Europe, and fits in the tree with the appropriate DNA percentages to my other established relatives. I'm about 80%+ sure it's him. He died but has several children still alive some of whom I've located on facebook (but not contacted). However, there are some difficulties - my potential grandfather was involved in quite a lot of crime and eventually shot himself.
My current approach (advised by my Tennessee helper) is to do a Y test with Family tree DNA. I'm currently waiting for this to be processed. My dad and aunt are desperate to find out the result, but i'm not looking forward to telling them what I suspect to be the truth.
I shall check back in when I get more data. Goodnight!
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Hi again. So I got the results of my dad's DNA test back. He had more than 1000 positive hits of 4th cousin or closer. 3 x 1st cousins, and 9 x 2nd cousins. My 80% guess was absolutely correct. I've told my dad and his sister everything I found out. They're both in their 70s and were fairly pragmatic about it. Unfortunately, the new relatives seem much more interested in managing the family narrative than in welcoming new family members. I'm ok with that. The whole affair has been emotionally draining and i'm glad we've reached an end, even if it is somewhat bitter.
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