Brick-walls: When an ancestor goes incognito, changes the family name, or disappears from the records, decades of genealogy research experience resolving numerous brick-walls are drawn upon to solve your mystery. Professional trade resources and in person research at local, national, and international repositories are utilized.
Adoption: The journey of discovery for birth parents is a sensitive one requiring the use of a combination of tree building, DNA centimorgans (cMs), triangulation and quantitative analysis to connect the dots of relationships with documented results. Living descendants are sensitively contacted if desired. Meticulous research is developed into a thorough detailed report.
"Both my brother ----- and I are so thoroughly impressed with your report, we were honestly left speechless! It was such a feeling of immense satisfaction and closure you brought to us as we went on such an exhilarating ride going word by word through your report. It has given us so many answers to a lot of trouble we dealt with growing up and has brought us much healing. Your research was simply exceptional." {Zach V., Sleepy Hollow, NY}
Birth Connections 80 Years Hence
It wasn't until Jan turned 80 that he seriously wanted to know about his birth parents. Born in Missouri, he was adopted as an infant. Within a year, his adoptive mother died at which time he and his adoptive father, Martin, moved east to New Jersey. Martin remarried and soon Jan had step-siblings, growing up in a happy family. Nearly 80 years later Jan wanted to connect the dots. Through the study of DNA centimorgans (cM) with others who had taken the test on Ancestry, a match of 614 cM was discovered. This indicated that there was one of four ways he could be related to the match. As the possibilities were fleshed out, family trees were constructed for Jan incorporating each of those options. Testing age probability, and using various documents, assisted in confirming or disproving how various relatives were related. Once analysis was completed, a list of living relatives was provided to Jan, and after reaching out to his birth siblings, he and a half-sister met and shared life stories and family history. Jan sent the attached photo and encouraged the use of his story to inspire others.
Sensitive Adoption
Situations surrounding adoptions can be sensitive many times. In the case of Juanita, her adoptive parents were not forthcoming with information surrounding her birth parents. Out of respect and love for her adoptive parents, no research was conducted during their lifetime. When Juanita died of brain cancer, followed by the death of her adoptive parents quite some time after, the adoption documents were passed down to Juanita's daughters. Unfortunately, nothing was revealed in the documents. Legacy Roots encouraged the sisters to take a DNA test, and the story began to unravel. Through the connection of DNA cMs along with documents, Juanita's birth mother was revealed. However, higher numbers between one specific cousin of the sisters exposed that their parents were not cousins, but siblings. Contact with one of the first cousins, a relation through their maternal grandfather, led to the discovery of the truth which was held in secret by the only surviving sibling of Juanita's birth mother.
Going Incognito
Anyone who has researched their family history at length eventually hit what is known as a ‘brickwall.’ Usually, that occurs while researching in the Colonial era or when records involve a foreign country. However, in this case, the brickwall came in the 20th century in a country without a language barrier. Curtis couldn’t understand why he couldn’t find any records earlier than 1930 for his grandfather born in 1899. A search for a birth record came up empty. However, a birth which occurred on the same date had several data points matching that of Curtis's grandfather including one of the two given names, birthdate and town, father's given name, and mother's given name, but a different surname. With further research, DNA, and graphology, comparing documents from the individual listed on the birth record, and that of what was available from Curtis’s grandfather, it became clear they were one and the same individual. Searching newspapers revealed the reason Curtis’s grandfather changed his name and went incognito, and DNA confirmed the connection to his grandfather's birth name.