Find Your Unknown Father using DNA

Many people for one reason or another do not know who their biological mother is, but not who their biological father is. If this describes you and you are interested in learning who they are/were, DNA can help you.

Strategy
The strategy to find your unknown father DNA is always the same regardless of which of the five main DNA companies you use.

1. You must first narrow down your list of genetic relatives to those who are only related to your unknown father 2. You then figure out how all of those identified genetic relatives are related to each other 3. You create a theory on how you fit into the family that best fits the evidence available 4. You find then target test the person you believe is your father or one of his descendants to see if they share the correct amount of DNA with you in order for your theory to be correct. You should always offer to pay for this test yourself as this will yield the highest chance of them agreeing to take it

Finding Your Unknown Father using Ancestry DNA
On Ancestry DNA, a common strategy is to sort your DNA matches into clusters and then to add a colored dot next to everyone in the same cluster until eventually the desired cluster is found. Once the desired cluster is found you search through the family trees of those who have provided them and also build quick and dirty trees for those who don't but can still be identified. You look for a common ancestor that appears in multiple of these trees and theorize how you could also be related to those ancestors. Finally, you contact a close relative of the father and send them a DNA test to see if you are right.

In Ancestry, it it also a good idea to add your tree and link it to your DNA results even if you only know the maternal side of your tree. After waiting a day or two for it to process, Ancestry's Thrulines feature will compare your tree against your matches' trees and try to identify as many common ancestors as possible for you. It will not be able to find relatives of your unknown father but it will help you eliminate matches on your known mother's side faster.

Currently Ancestry has over 20,000,000 people in their database. If you are American and your unknown father was also probably American, then its sheer size makes it likely you will be able to find some relatives who are useful to your goal. However, far fewer people from other countries have taken Ancestry DNA tests so if the unknown father is from a different country, then it may be much harder or impossible to have success using their database. In particular, problems that go back to Germany are unlikely to be solved with Ancestry because so few Germans have tested.

Case Study Using Ancestry DNA
Ash wants to identify his biological father. He and his maternal first cousin have both taken Ancestry DNA kits.

1. Ash logs into Ancestry.com and goes to his DNA matches. His top match is his half-sister. 2. Ash clicks on cousin and goes to the shared matches. All of the people listed are probably related on his mother's side, even if he does not know who they are. Ash creates a new group called "Delia" named after his mother and assigns all the shared matches to this group. 3. Ash then goes back to his full match list and finds the closest match without a dot. It is a person named TRBO and they have no family tree. TRBO is a predicted 2nd cousin. 4. Ash looks at the shared matches between himself and TRBJ, one of them have the dot he just assigned everyone matching his mother. These matches are probably all related to his unknown father and specifically to one of his paternal grandparents. 5. Ash creates a new group called "Paternal Cluster 1" and assigns TRBO and all the shared matches to that group. 6. Now Ash starts looking at the shared matches for any that have published pedigrees. He tries to look at the closest relatives with detailed pedigrees first. Ash will probably not recognize any of the people in these pedigrees. This makes sense because Ash does not know who his father is or any of his father's ancestors. 7. Ash's goal in looking at all the trees is to figure out how the people who came up on the shared matches are related to each other. Once he has looked at all of the easy trees, he starts looking at the trees of the people who provided far less information in their pedigrees. He does genealogy research to expand these trees himself. Since his goal is only to figure out how the match is related to everyone else, he does not take the time to create quality citations or enter everything into FamilySearch FamilyTree unless he wants to. He is creating "quick and dirty" trees to further his research not theirs. 8. Eventually, Ash discovers that many of the people on the shared match list descend from Bruno Rocket and his wife Lorelei Kanto. Ash must also be related to them somehow. He could be directly descended from both of them or he could be related to only one of them and the common ancestor is farther back in time. 9. Once again Ash goes back to his full match list and is now looking for someone else who has no dot next to them meaning they have not already been put into the group representing his maternal DNA or the paternal grandparent that Bruno and Lorelei are somehow related to. He finds another predicted 2nd cousin named Larry who has no dot and neither do any of the shared matches. 10. Ash creates a new group called "Paternal Cluster 2" and assigns Larry and all the shared matches to it. Once again he looks through their trees as best he can and finds and most of the matches are descended from Lance Harris and Agatha Whetstone. Once again, Ash could be descended from both of them or related to only one of them farther back. 11. Now Ash does traditional research to find a place where the two clusters intersect. In other words, he is looking for where somebody in the Bruno-Lorelei cluster marries somebody in the Lance-Agatha cluster. Wherever they marry is probably where Ash fits into the family because that explains how he could have DNA from both groups. 12. After some digging, Ash finds that Bruno and Lorelei had a son named James Rocket who married Jesse Harrison the daughter of Lance and Agatha. They had eight children: Blaine, Bob, Koga, Giovanni, Erika, Sabrina, Brock, and Misty. One of the boys could be his biological father so his father may be Blaine, Bob, Koga, Giovanni, or Brock. 13. Ash conducts research to see if any of the five boys were in the right time and place to be his biological father. He keeps an open mind and considers that his father may have been married to someone else at the time or conception and is willing to go wherever the evidence takes him. 13. Through traditional research, Ash learns that Bob was working as a lieutenant in the Navy 1000 miles away at the time of conception, although Bob may have come back to visit and fathered Ash then, Bob seems like a less likely candidate. Ash also learns that Giovanni lived just a few blocks away from Delia at the time of conception and the other brothers lived in towns relatively close by. Giovanni is also the brother who was closest in age to Delia at the time. 14. Ash decides Giovanni is the most likely candidate to be his father, that Bob is the least likely, but that ultimately it still could be any of them. Ash is unable to locate Giovanni, but Ash successfully contacts one of his sons named Silver. 15. Ash tactfully explains that he is trying to identify his biological father and his not after money or a share of the inheritance. He asks if he can send Silver a free DNA test and Silver agrees to this. 16. A month later Ash checks his DNA match list, Silver shows up as his closest relative and the two share 1895 cM's. This is too much for them to be 1st cousins and the best explanation is that they are half-brothers. Ash and Silver are both sons of Giovanni Rocket. Everyone in Paternal Cluster 1 is related to his paternal grandfather James Rocket son of Bruno and Lorelei and everyone in Paternal Cluster 2 is related to his paternal grandmother Jesse Harrison. Ash renames the clusters accordingly.