Week 39 – Surprise

 

The network of genealogists across the world is a tight group. There are so many outlets to request help, to pose a question, or just get moral support when working on a hard problem related to someone’s family tree.  The following story is not about my own ancestors, but more about these genealogists who are always out there helping anyone they can, while possibly adding to their own.

One of my dearest and longest-time friends is adopted.  She has always known this. Her parents chose her and loved her with their whole hearts. I don’t know when she decided she wanted to know about her birth parents, but I know if I was in her situation curiosity would have led me on that same path. 

A number of years ago, my friend actually met her biological mother. I believe she described her as, “a piece of work.”  Needless to say, a close relationship was not fostered.  A few years later, my friend had her DNA tested through Ancestry.com, but unsure of how to understand the report, she went on about her life. It wasn’t until a conversation between the two of us, and I became aware of her DNA results just languishing out there, that I offered to help decipher her results.

My friend made me an administrator for her DNA results and off I went trying to unravel her mysteries.  Since she knew who her biological mother was, it wasn’t too hard to make a tree of her maternal ancestors.  I was shocked when it appeared that not a single person on her maternal line had ever been tested. My friend was born in a hospital for unwed mothers, and my first thought was that perhaps she was switched at birth.  Back in the 1950’s, there were relatively few safeguards in place to ensure the child wasn’t mixed up with another.  I went so far as to reach out to a genealogist friend in the state where she was born who helped adoptees. As it turns out, she was well versed in the particular hospital where my friend was born.  This genealogist offered up quite a bit of information, including that often the babies were randomly doled out to the new parents without caring whether the paperwork was correct for that particular child.  If this was the case, then the woman my friend met so many years before, may well have been the biological mother of some other infant.

When she was initially tested, my friend had no close family in her results, and only a few who fell in the 1^st – 2^nd cousin range. I compiled her findings using the Leeds Method, and then set out by starting several family trees based on the lineage of her matches. I worked on it quite a bit, but with so few close results, I set it aside. My hope was that at least one person, who was closely related to her, to receive a DNA test as a gift.  It wasn’t long before a half-sister was tested, and rather than providing answers, it brought up only more questions.  The half-sister was raised by the woman who my friend had met and was introduced as her mother. But neither my friend nor her half-sister matched any descendants of the family of their biological mother, as we knew them to be.

I have a cousin who is obsessed with genealogy as much as I am.  We periodically swap notes regarding our shared ancestors – on her paternal side, and my maternal side.  A few months ago, she sent me a message asking how my friend and I were related, as I was shown to be the administrator of my friend’s DNA.  My cousin was exceedingly interested thinking that both her father and mother were somehow related in past generations.  I told her that I wasn’t related to my friend but was only helping her trace her roots. To our SURPRISE, my friend comes up as a match to my cousin and her mother!

Over the next few months, my cousin and I made several surprising discoveries.  She and my friend are related through each of their mother’s.  While my cousin worked on the maternal line, I managed to triangulate the matches to find my friend’s biological father’s family.  We identified when her Croatian ancestors first came to American. We also discovered that my friend’s biological mother was also adopted, which made finding her roots much more difficult. Within a few short weeks, working together, we were able to provide my friend with a family tree that goes back eight generations on one line, and including her birth father’s line.  I am forever grateful for my cousin who continued to check on her mother’s DNA, and then reached out when my name popped up in conjunction with one of her matches. 

I have met so many wonderful genealogists who are always willing to share their knowledge and expertise. Pablo Picasso said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”  I believe that genealogists have found their gift, and when they share what they’ve found, they are giving it away in order that someone might have a better understanding of where they came from.