My ex-husband was adopted at birth. He never wanted to find his birth parents. It wasn't until our daughter has grown up that it seemed important.

For several years my mom had a theory that an aunt of his might be his real mother. She (my mom) died a couple years ago without ever knowing for sure. My daughter & I have tossed around how we might determine the answer. In the meantime, I got interested in deeper genealogy and did the Ancestry DNA test. Then my daughter decided she wanted to do it also. We thought it might shed some light on our theory.

In prep for the results I made her a family tree with her adoptive family as a starting point. When we got the results she actually matched a set of her great great grandparents. Actually she matched with someone whose shared the same set. Anyway, we thought we were on the right path.

Then as I learned more about how the DNA measures work and looked at her matches I noticed she had 20-25 matches that had a common surname. One match was quite significant and had to be rather close in relationship. Eventually we found an adoption searcher who has a rare set of original birth indexes for the state in question. For $300 she would tell us the maiden name of the birth mother and last name of the supposed father. We felt it was worth it. By morning we had our answer. It was not the aunt.

The mother's maiden name was listed as Ledd, father's last name as Marchian. So I started looking for families with the Ledd last name. Turns out that name if very uncommon. So I thought maybe it was transcribed wrong and tried Ladd instead. Yes, that was it. So I searched the genealogy sites and found a possible couple with the names. I put them in a new family tree. I got a new set of matches to the maternal line. But the common name from the previously mentioned group wasn't from the mother. Therefore had to be from the father.

With the '2nd cousin' range match, I was able to determine that this one couple had to be my ex's grandparents. That left me to figure which one of their sons was the father. One was deceased, one out there somewhere and I found one on Facebook. This one jumped out at me. He looked like my ex. Alot!. I continued to search the internet. I found a lady who had posted on a genealogy forum way back in 2001 looking for one of the brothers. What caught my eye was her last name. It was the same as the 2n