Need expert help with dna info to find birth grandfather tested 3 sites

[mollyblum]

Totally gutted. Thought I knew 99%sure who my father’s father was through testing & elimination after locating birth mother & 1/2 brother. He even looks like family & my brother looks like a twin to some of the cousins! We lived on the same street... but I have not matched one person on his side of the family in any of the 3 sites of testing but have all of these mystery 3rd & 4th cousins that do not match anyone on my tree & one possible 2nd cousin that we cannot find any connection to. Finally his supposed 1st cousin (his supposed birth dad’s brother’s child) tested & contacted me to say she thinks she found a sister to my dad (this guy was prolific) as she matches her at that level & wants to visit. But I don’t match either of them & neither does my nephew (my brother’s child). So clearly we are not related. We thought my dad was the child of this man & his 1/2 brother the son of someone else but it turns out more like the opposite. But I cannot make sense of any of the matches I have. I do know my brother did a Y-Dna test & we matched an entire clan of an EDDY family that tested & traced their line to the Vicar of Cranbrook Eddy so we are related to him on the Male line somehow (the entire Eddy family tested - like 100’s of males so I guess I can say that with some certainty). None of 3rd or 4th cousins are Eddy’s but I do match some on Ftdna further down the line as 5th cousin & beyond along the vicar of Cranbrook lineage with several people.

I need help figuring out these matches. I am not stupid & was able to figure out his birth mom & have done genealogy for years but I am stumped & I don’t know where to begin. Can anyone offer assistance??

Thanks!
Amybeth

[loobster]

Please just talk about this site and those who have done FamilyFinder here, for a moment.
Have you taken the FamilyFinder test here?
Has your brother done the FamilyFinder test here?
------------If yes, Does FTDNA show you two as full siblings?

Have your parents done FamilyFinder here? If not, are they still alive?


re: "his supposed 1st cousin" -- are you talking about a 1st cousin of your (supposed) father's father -- or??

actually, backing up -- " Thought I knew 99%sure who my father’s father was through testing & elimination after locating birth mother & 1/2 brother. "
your birth mother ? your father's birth mother? birth mother of your father' father?
and, in addition to that - has she done FamilyFinder at FTDNA?
similar questions re: 1/2 brother

[mollyblum]

Just saw your response. My brother is my full brother. He did Y-dna testing at Ancestry & it was transferred here. I have done autosomal testing on myself here, at Ancestry & 23& me. My father’s half brother has the same mother- different father bc Y-dna is different. And yes my brother is my father’s son.

I actually figured out who his birth father was with the help of 2nd cousin match on Ancestry. The Y-Dna matches had 50 or 60 men with the same surname matching my brother & it turned out in 2009 the Family association for people with this last name paid for the men to all get their Y-dna tested. Good thing! This 2nd cousin just happened to have a great Aunt that married a man with that last name & had a child with him who would be the right age to be my father’s birth father. Did some research & he lived a block from my father’s birth mother & went away overseas (WWII) soon after my father would have been consummated. Just to try it out I plugged him in my tree as my father’s birth father & all those 3rd & 4th cousin matches on Ancestry that I had no idea how I was related magically popped up as known matches ( if you have Ancestry you will know what I’m talking about- if your tree matches another dna match’s tree they tell you how). So it was clear this man was my grandfather.

[mollyblum]

Further update:

ordered military records to try & find info on my grandfather but apparently there was a fire & his records were destroyed. I was able to get a pic of his grave & found out he was a Staff Sgt in the Army during WWII. I thought that was all I would get since there were no living relatives- close ones anyway- to help out. I just happened to check newspapers.com & found his death write up. He was only 59 when he died but he was living in the YMCA bc he was an ex-con who had gotten sober & was counselling alcoholic prisoners. Unfortunately he became ill with pancreatic cancer & died at the VA. He had no family so the military buried him in Baltimore. Sad story but there was a pic & my father does resemble him. My father is also a recovering alcoholic who got sober the same year as his birth father (weird). Unfortunately his birth father never knew about him but at least we know the story now.