Some adoptees have access to their original birth certificates. Others have paperwork from their adoption agency. Some are given just enough information from their adoptive parents that they are able to begin a search for a birth parent. But some adoptees have nothing, absolutely nothing to begin a search.
Enter DNA registration.
There are many well known registries - Ancestry, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, Living DNA, MyHeritage, GEDMatch, the list continues to grow. The point is, if you choose to register your DNA in search of a birth parent, learning to make connections and build family trees for your matches can be essential to finding answers to questions you’ve had from the moment you started wondering who makes up your biological family.
Some of your DNA matches will have public family trees you can view immediately, but you still need to know how to navigate them. Others will have private family trees that can only be accessed by gaining permission directly from the tree’s creator. That might not be a bridge you want to cross yet. And still others will be registered but have no family tree that is linked to their profile.
So. How do you build family trees for your DNA matches to start filling in holes and honing in on your birth mother’s and birth father’s identities?
You start with your closest match and work your way out from there. If your closest match has a family tree, check it out. Note your match’s parents if they are listed. Note their grandparents, great-grandparents, and even great-great-grandparents. Note all the aunts, uncles, and cousins that are listed. You’re working on a family tree that is part of your own family tree. You just don’t have all the particulars yet and know where you fit in this tangled web of strangers.
If a match doesn’t have a family tree or if it’s private and you don’t want to reach out to them for permission, there are some tips and tricks you can try to build their family tree yourself:
If your match has an unusual or unique name, Google it. Search for them on social media. Many users have the same photo in Ancestry as they do on Facebook. They also often use the same username across platforms, so try searching for that same username on multiple platforms. If you find them on social media, you’re likely to identify several family connections as well.
If your match has an email address on the DNA platform you’re using, Google that email address to try to connect it to a name. It’s wise to also search for an email address without the domain attached.
Once you have a name, work on connecting it to other names (parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) via obituaries. Obituaries can provide so many connections and names, all in one place.
Ancestry has some great historical records you can sift through if you pay for their membership. One historical record typically leads to many others. Even if you don’t know your match’s real name, input their username into Ancestry’s member directory search.
newspapers.com is also a paid membership that can be worth it’s weight in gold.
In GEDMatch, run your match’s kit number in the “one to many” option. You could discover one of their close matches is their parent, child, sibling, etc. who might provide their identifying information when your match did not.
On some DNA registry platforms, you can identify which of your other DNA matches also share DNA with the match you are currently researching. If this is the case, one of those “shared” matches might have a family tree that is viewable when your close match does not. You might be able to identify where your close match lands on that family tree.
When looking at and building family trees of your DNA matches, your challenge is to try and identify a common ancestor. Once you can identify a common ancestor, you can then try building that line of the family tree forward because that’s where your birth father or birth mother is going to descend.
If it gets too tricky for you and you know you’re in over your head, this is the time to contact a private investigator who specializes in these cases or even a genealogist who can help connect the dots.
But, alas, have hope! The answers are there.