Genealogy Chat

I would love to find out who was the father of my illegitimate gt grandfather and was hoping that by having my dna tested it would help me.
Unfortunately I have no idea how the results will help me. I can't check against people researching the same surnames as I have no idea of the name I am looking for. I have 105 4th cousins/distant cousins on my Ancestry dna list. I've contacted several but they're unsure how they can help

Can anyone advise me please?

Chris

If your great grandfather's birth certificate does not name a father and there is no clue on his baptism record then I'm afraid I don't think anything is going to help you find out who he was. We all have illegitimate ancestors where we can't get any further back.

I don't know how the DNA tests work myself, so someone with more knowledge might have a different answer for you, but personally I think that unless someone invents a time machine we are never going to know.

Kath. x

Like Kathleen, I don't think you have much chance of finding the name - you could try to eliminate some of the matches if you can find links to others in your family tree to reduce the ones to look into.

Not sure if you are aware, but you can also download your raw DNA results and upload to My Heritage, if you click on settings when you access your results you will be given the option on the right to download the results. I've done this and have far more matches, and a number of close matches using that site.

I recently found my previously unknown G.grandfather by searching newspaper reports. My G.grandmother took him to court for maintenance of the child. I hadn't realised it but it was apparently quite a common occurrence. Whilst I was at it, I found that she had had another illegitimate child and gone through the process again. A great aunt we know nothing about.

Thank you all for your replies. I guess I'm never going to break this particular wall down.

Chris

My O H doesn’t,t know wh their grandfather is. On ancestry dna he shows as having 4 2nd cousins,

One is known to us the other 3 are not. His mother and father came from opposite ends of the country, which helps.

One of the remaining names has a tree and the 3rd persons surname matches surnameson that tree. This has to be his grandfathers family . We haven,t contacted them as it is probable they don,t know. The story goes that the grandfather owned up but he was married with children.