I was recently working on a project for someone who was adopted as a newborn. I started with a hypothetical tree, since there was speculation that one of the birthparents was related to one of the adoptive parents.

I used Jeff Snavely's wonderful tool and downloaded the matches and their ancestors to Excel for analysis. I found a direct ancestor match between the adoptee and one of his/her DNA matches (at the 3x gr gr parent level). However, the match was listed as a distant cousin match with a low confidence level. This puzzled me.

I also found surname matches between the adoptee and his/her DNA matches at nearly every point of the hypothetical tree. Many of the names were uncommon, so it seemed like it couldn't be a coincidence. Yet, there were no direct ancestor matches with people who were supposedly say 2-4th cousins.

Any ideas?