DNA Success

So this week has been a wonderful success for me. Even though I did not find anything new about my past, I did help someone identify their grandparents.

Last year I got a close match on myself and my father's cousin.  When we started discussing our past, it turns out she was trying to find her birth mother's parents. Her birth mother was adopted at birth in Oregon and the only information we knew was that her name was Dolly.

Well I have been doing this a while, and I had a pretty good handle on my Oregon based families, so I thought I would help.    Plus,  I will say it again, that Facebook is an amazing tool for genealogists. (I just wish they would make it easier to post old photos and label them with peoples names, dates and locations. )

Anyway,  recently she had her father tested. Because she shared her DNA results with me,  I was able to begin looking at her matches in earnest.  One of her close matches that did not match her father,  did not match any of my relatives.  I knew this person would be my best bet.  Looking at the persons tree, I noticed a surname that was familiar to me.  My great grandmother's sister had married into that family.

Following my great grandmother's sister's husband up one generation, I was able to find the MRCA between the adoptee and the match that didn't match me.

This was very strong evidence that the adoptee was a product of the marriage of my great grandmother's sister.

After a little research I noticed that I had stopped researching my great grandmother's siblings descendants. I have found that finding living descendants from my ancestors on Facebook has provided enormous insight. Also, there is so much more you can get from speaking to people on the phone, that you will ever get just searching online.

After some search we were able to get some more descendants of this marriage online, but alas, no real insight. It seems the family splintered and really did not keep in contact.

As I searched each of my grandparents siblings,  I noted that I had actually spoken to Betty, one of the wives of the family a few years ago on the phone. I decided to give her a call and pose the question to her just to see.  I asked her a couple side questions I had, then popped the big one. "Have you ever heard of an adoption in the family?"

"Well that would have been Dolly" she said.

Wow. Talk about excitement. Confirmation, by name. Turns out Dolly had a couple marriages and three more children she was able to raise. I got phone numbers and gave them to the cousin who was looking.

Betty said, "You know I never said anything before because some people like to keep that sort of thing hidden. I am not even sure her children know of that baby. It is only because you asked, that I told you."

Betty is 90 years old. We have yet to talk to the surviving children, I am going to leave that up to the adoptee, but the fact is, had we never gotten spoken to Betty, and the surviving children don't know about the child, it might have been a long time before the mother was actually identified.

Lessons learned and reinforced, research and contact all of the descendants and speak to the elders.