Two recent clients have had the same family history problem to solve - a baby born to a single mother with no clues as to the identity of the baby's father.
This was really not an unusual occurrence in the 19th and early 20th Centuries but until recently many families did not discuss their family history and felt unable to ask questions of older relations.
It is only in the last few decades that we have felt able to explore the genealogy that perhaps our ancestors would have felt uncomfortable about. All too often, however, the relatives best able to solve any family history mysteries have died long before those crucial questions could be asked.
We now have a powerful family history tool at our disposal with global genealogy DNA services able to show us the people with whom we might match. Logical (some might say mathematical) analysis of these matches can often help to identify the family of that father and, in some cases, it is possible to draw up quite a short list of possible candidates, using other genealogical sources to support the logic.