A family member, by marriage, just found her birth mom year before last via DNA. The test led to a first cousin who agreed to help - remembered something about an aunt who had given up a child. When she asked the aunt, yes she had given up a daughter and all the data matched up. They requested confirmation from the unwed mother’s home (which would give no info out until after they found each other) & they also confirmed the adoption details, etc. Sometimes these reunions don’t work out/are unhappy, but this turned out to be a good one. They’d both been looking for each other for years.
Well, one challenge is your children by your marriage. If those kids don’t know about the illegitimate child from her teens, how are they going to react to discovering a big brother/sister?
“A family member, by marriage, just found her birth mom year before last via DNA”
My grandmother who was born in 1889, was adopted. Last year I had my 96-year-old mother take an Ancestry DNA test. Within a matter of weeks, I was able to identify both of my grandmother’s biological parents based on several of my mother’s 2nd cousin matches.
A 139-year-old mystery was solved thru modern technology. The icing on the cake was that relatives of the two biological parents had posted their pictures on Ancestry and findagrave.com.