Update 2026: Assam tea plantation 1920s. Search for a mother

Foundling cases remain a passion, it really is incredible: a baby left on a doorstep, on a hill or outside a shop, now we can find answers through DNA. Unusually, on this occasion I am looking for a mother for a client, the Scottish father being known. We have the mother’s name; it’s European, yet DNA tells us the mother was Indian. The child, my client, was happily adopted but questions remain. Is the mother’s name, given on a baptism certificate, a red herring or is there a clue here? You can DNA test to reveal the TRUE identity of a great grandparent. Your great grandfather left on a doorstep - no way to tell who he was? There is a way!Many don’t realise DNA can unlock family mysteries & rumours of the past, even at a few generations' distance. If YOU test you can find out if Great Granny really had the aristocratic father that family lore proclaimed... "My father was famous!" In one recent...
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Long Lost Families: Born Without Trace 2

It has been a privilege to work on Long Lost Families: Born Without Trace 2. Finding parents without any usable data of any kind is tricky, to say the least. I really enjoy the challenge of the most difficult - if not ‘impossible to solve’ - cases. So many have given up all hope of finding family; to be able to give people much needed answers is rewarding and provides much-needed closure for foundlings. DNA detective work There’s a real art to it all, and a tremendous amount of work involved in sifting through the cousin matches (after a DNA test at the direct-to-consumer sites) looking for commonalities, and a piecing together of 'the clues' - common surnames, locations, shared ancestors in the 1700s etc - to ultimately achieve 'the goal' of identifying the biological parents for a foundling. This process can take many months depending on the amount of cousin representation on the databases. After a while, I get a...
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August 2019

This has been an incredibly busy and exciting summer. Earlier in the year I appeared on Long Lost Family’s Foundling Special: Born Without Trace. This has generated many enquiries and consequently I have provided answers for foundlings and those with a family mystery to solve using DNA.  (more…)...
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