Our kids DNA must look like potpourri. Their mom's side of the family came here so long ago they "walked here".
Posted on 06/10/2020 8:32:25 AM PDT by NEMDF
One of my sisters had put DNA in to 23 & Me sometime in the past (several years ago, maybe).
Over the past week, she has been notified of a person who just recently submitted DNA for testing. It turns out that this person seems to be our half-sibling.
There are 5 of us from same parents, all born from 1954 to 1960. The newly identified one seems to be related only to our father and born in 1964. I babysat for this person and two siblings, when I was around 10 or 11.
Their family moved away around 1969, but I have had some contacts with the family over the years, having also relocated to the same state. Now find out that this half-sibling has lived in the same city, and at one time, only 1.5 miles from me over some of the interim years, so very likely we have crossed paths in the past. The person no longer lives in this state or area.
Of our parents' generation, only the mother of the half-sibling is still living.
My sister has been in contact with the newly identified half-sibling, who never had an inkling that their dad was not the biological father.
I am trying to comprehend this news, and to develop some possible foreseeable outcomes, but this is very challenging on a cognitive level.
I am just wondering whether any FReepers have any experience with this type of situation, what happened with the relationships, advice on moving forward, etc.
Thanks in advance for any input or suggestions.
The “Pickles” comic strip a few years ago had a sequence on DNA testing. Earl orders a test for Opal, but while she is on the phone talking to her sister, their dog Roscoe licks the vial without her noticing. When the results come back she is one-third Irish setter.
We may be cousins, lol
A couple of years ago I was able to help a distant cousin in Australia (adopted at birth) discover who her biological mother was. Her adoptive parents are deceased. She was conceived when her mother was raped (her biological father is deceased). The result was a very happy reunion. I knew about the cousin only because we both had taken DNA tests.
Seems bass-acwards to me but I can understand the sentiment.
My wife was an infant adoption. She was raised in an upper upper middle class family and had a healthy relationship with her family. She has a brother 15 years older than her and a sister 10 years older.
When we received the news that we were going to be grandparents I started the search for my wife’s bio family. My daughter-in-law’s family has a genetically linked fatal neurological syndrome that could rear it’s ugly head if it were on our side of the family as well.
At about the same time we found my wife’s adoption papers that named her birth mother (not father). So I had a location, date and name.
I started with Ancestry.com to search. I found a yearbook photo of a woman with that name, the right age, the right part of the country and a resemblance to my wife. Her tag line under her picture was “I’m from the South, y’all.”
My wife did the 23 & Me thing and found out that she had over 1,400 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins in their system. Most of them were in North Carolina (my wife was born in Illinois).
I started searching Facebook and came up with three women who were the right age with the right name. I messaged each of them asking if they were the so and so who went to XYZ high school. Two months later one responded that she was.
After a series of messages back and forth it was determined that she was my wife’s bio mom. She had been born in NC, but her family moved to IL when she was a teen. My wife had a full sister and two nieces. Her bio father had remarried a couple of times and I think she is up to 4 half-siblings.
Both families started friending each other on Facebook, sharing stories and photos.
We found out that my wife’s bio sister was about to celebrate her 50th birthday on a cruise with friends and family. We asked the nieces if it would be okay to go on the cruise and surprise her. My wife got to meet her sister in a very happy moment.
About a year later we were able to fly her sister and mom to us for an extended visit. More happy tears.
The only shadow on the whole thing is the reaction of my wife’s sister - the one she grew up with. We have attempted to assure her that she is not being replaced, but she has issues and gives my wife grief about her “new family” all the time.
“The thing that surprised me the most is that my DNA showed no Native American (Cherokee) and no African ancestry.”
A lot of the ancestors on my Dad’s side of the family settled in the Tenn./N. Carolina area. Rumor was that my dad’s mother who died at a young age was part Cherokee.
No Cherokee DNA or African has showed up on my Dad’s side of the family as of yet.
On the other side of my family, my mothers’s. In the early 1800’s a female “free negro” show’s up with no surname. Most of her ancestors were not poor and were English and Scottish. She may have married an Indian, Cherokee/possible.
Indian descendants were tracked down on paper from the late 1700’s to 1800’s until close to a hundred Cherokee ancestors show up via the old fashioned way, birth, marriages, military service and death via (paper) documentation. Yet, there is zero DNA documentation of any Cherokee DNA in my mother’s family or my DNA and siblings.
Also, my mother’s maiden surname came from a wealthy British sea captain in the Brit Navy and later with his own ship. He settled in S. Carolina and had a slew of kids with what was supposedly a Greek Slave girl, he had purchased and then married brought to S Carolina.
Some of us wonder if “Greek” was code for African.
My DNA shows African DNA, Benin/Togo 3%. A sibling has African DNA but not Benin/Togo. Yet her children and grand kids have African DNA, Benin/Togo.
The “documented” Cherokee and other Indian blood appeared a a Cherokee woman marring my 4th great grand father on my mother’s side of the family.
Close to a hundred Cherokee ancestors show up via the old fashioned genealogy way, birth, marriages, military service and death documentation.
Exactly!
If this were some total stranger, you would be justified in being skeptical - but if turns out that you actually babysat this person, then the reality is: Your father had sexual relations with that neighbor woman.
Does this change your opinion of your father? I mean: The fact that he probably knew it was his child (that they were his children?), and yet abandoned them?
Regards,
“If you are talking about different ethnicity percentages, you would be absolutely correct. Each company has its own database and is building its own set of who belongs to what ethnicity. As more people are tested each company will also be updating their ethnicity percentages. For example, the first ethnicity estimate I got said I was almost 25% Irish”
As the databases get bigger, the accuracy improves and the part of this is also the limitations are better understood, so there’s more understanding that a specific country can’t be specified.
So specific Ireland, for example, is decreased and assigned more broadly. In other words as they get more data it becomes more clear that certain DNA is shared among say Ireland, Britain and part of Europe so it can’t be aligned except broadly.
It affects Americans who are mixes of different backgrounds. For example a stretch of DNA might be common to a part of Ireland, Scandanavia and France. How to assign this to an American?
I had that problem. My mother was adopted (sort of, Grandma was dating a lawyer and wanted a baby; but, didn't want to have to go thru the pregnancy/birth), so there are no actual documents. When my mother was starting school, Grandma just went to some agency, told them that she had been born at home (which still happened at that time, my father was born at home) and they gave my Grandmother a birth certificate for her.
So, I did ancestry to try to straighten out my genetics, since I had been told by both my parents that I was German from both sides. My Dad, I believed because I knew his parents; but, I could look at my Mom and know that she was not German.
Anyway, when the results came in, I was gobsmacked. My first thought was, who were these people. I came out with 42% English, 19% Scandanavian (to which my hubby replied, "bloody Vikings"). Germany was 3rd followed by Italian, and a dash of Western European Jew.
It didn't really help much, just gave me more questions. I have a half brother (Mom's first marriage) who did this; and, I was surprised that they listed him as a 1st Cousin.
Also, I recently received an update from Ancestry telling me that they had enough information to fine tune my report and the British part turned out to be Wales -- so I'm majority Welsh.
This does not really much change my opinion of my father, as he more-or-less abandoned the five of us, when I was about 10 or 11. He was not a good parent. Late in his life, he chalked it up to not having “emotional intelligence”. He was very, very smart in other ways.
I don’t know if he knew about the other child, but seems like he could have or should have. But in my mind, I am giving the benefit of the doubt that maybe it was a one-time transgression, and he and the mother both were never sure, and chose to live their lives as if the child was from the mother’s husband.
Last year on her death bed, my mother told me and my sister that she had a child before us and she went to some place where pregnant girls went for about the time she was showing and had the baby there and gave him up for adoption. Big ole secret. I say let sleeping dogs lie.
I read somewhere that there really isn’t Cherokee DNA and it shows up as something else like Jewish or Asian. I don’t really remember. I had .1% Middle Eastern but everything else was European (Scottish, etc.) I was joking around with a friend about the ME DNA and was told Adam and Eve. LOL
That is a fascinating story, and seems to be mostly happy endings. Thanks for sharing.
“Your sister took it upon herself to make contact with this half-sibling without informing the rest of you?”
The sister and half-sibling both agreed to any theoretical contact that could arise by doing the DNA test and allowing sharing.
Initial contact is simply seeing the list of DNA relatives.
23 and Me has messaging like here at FR if people who match want to write to each other.
In this case it’s doubtful the sister knew in advance she would have a half-sibling match.
Thanks for sharing a positive experience you know of.
How sad for your mother, to keep the secret for all those years. I understand about sleeping dogs, but hope your half-brother hasn’t wondered all of his life, as to what were the circumstances related to his birth and biological family.
My Mom was born illegitimately in 1938. It turns out that her father, who never acknowledged her, also legitimately fathered a son the year before. The son was high up in the FBI for many years. I’ve considered contacting him, but decided not to.
“I read somewhere that there really isn’t Cherokee DNA and it shows up as something else like Jewish or Asian. I don’t really remember. I had .1% Middle Eastern but everything else was European (Scottish, etc.) I was joking around with a friend about the ME DNA and was told Adam and Eve. LOL”
There are a lot of rumors about some early and probably eastern Europeans becoming Cherokees and some of the other so called Civilized Tribes.
Some say that is bs. Others, like me with decades of genealogy work, feel that something is wrong here.
I have friends and relatives with basically zero African DNA being traced, identified, and documented to where their ancestors came from in Africa.
Yet, their American Indian DNA “ain’t here” with most of us.
Some say, “Supposedly this is supposed to be corrected this summer.”
So much of our history is based on fiction/hear say and zero reality. DNA can be the tool to tell us a lot of the reality, unless it is programmed to ignore certain data.
Politically, the real DNA data if there is any could be like time bombs that could create a lot of political unrest.
Our kids DNA must look like potpourri. Their mom's side of the family came here so long ago they "walked here".
Oh yeah, we connected and made him feel at home I believe. He was able to meet his biological full brother. Unfortunately his mom and dad had passed away some years ago. It’s a similar situation to you- he was born in ‘55 to my great Aunt and Uncle who had him before they got married. Their other children had no idea they had an earlier child given up to adoption.
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