SOLVED: Michael had many good matches of whom I quickly found the common ancestor. Most of his matches descended from a Mormon man who had 7 wives, two of which were his stepdaughters as well as his wives and 23 children. Not only were we dealing with polygamy we were also dealing with endogamy which made Michael's case an interesting and challenging case to work on!
4 days later I had built a large tree (approx. 1000) based on Michael's matches and had found several more Mormon common ancestors who's trees I also built. At the end of day 4, I was certain I had found his birthmother after researching likely candidates after making several connections in his master tree I had built.
Unfortunately, his birthmother was deceased but, he made a great connection to an aunt who in turn tested to confirm that she was indeed his aunt.
Congratulations Michael!
Michael's case was a good example of when lots of good matches can many times mean UH OH. Endogamy can be a reason for many matches which can make a case tough to solve as the "numbers" and relationship estimates we make from the numbers can be quite skewed. Often times you may run into a common ancestor who was married more than once, this is where your more distant matches come into play. You need to scour those match lists to find more distant matches that tie into the correct spouses ancestral lines.
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