Case Study 1

RM came to me with two questions: did his family have Irish roots, and could his DNA results help him find the biological father he'd never known?

He'd tested with AncestryDNA and had three strong matches, sharing between roughly 402 and 733 cM with him — a solid starting point.

I began by organising his matches using the Leeds Method, grouping them by shared-match patterns to separate his paternal and maternal sides. His highest match, at around 733 cM, had a useful tree showing her mother and her mother's siblings. Working outward from that tree and cross-referencing it with his other matches, I was able to identify the family his unknown paternal line came from.

From there, the documented family structure left only one realistic candidate who could account for RM's relationship to these matches. Combining the close DNA matches, how they related to each other, the shared-match evidence, and the family tree gave a clear route to identifying his biological father.

His other question led somewhere unexpected. Following his maternal grandfather's line back led to an Irish family story marked by real hardship: a great-grandmother who died of tuberculosis in 1916, and a great-grandfather, a miner, who died in the 1918 flu pandemic — leaving three children behind, two of whom spent time in Catholic orphanages.

What this case shows: a strong start with a handful of close matches doesn't hand you an answer outright. It takes organising the matches, working out how they connect, building the family tree, and combining that with the documentary record. And sometimes, answering one question opens the door to a much bigger family story.