DNA Testing

So, were you lured by the many advertisements during the holiday season to purchase a DNA testing kit?  I saw commercials, advertisements, and social media posts from Ancestry, 23andMe, and My Heritage.  Did you take the plunge and purchase a kit or, better still, receive one as a gift? 

I had DNA testing done a few years ago through Ancestry DNA.  I have had an Ancestry.com subscription for years and  I find it helpful to link my DNA results to my family tree and view the shared ancestry I have with other Ancestry.com members who have done the same.  DNA testing can lead me to people who have family pictures, documents, and stories that I have never seen or heard.  It can provide the final  blow that shatters a brick wall I have been chipping away at for years.  

Let’s face it, though – what many people are really interested in is their ethnic composition.  Here is my Ethnicity Estimate:

If you are only interested in your ethnic composition, it might be wise to restrict your privacy settings so your DNA results aren’t matched with others’ results because there could be surprises.  If you aren’t prepared to discover previously unknown members of your biological family, I suggest that you don’t make your DNA matches publicly available.  In this post I will share experiences I have had with three people with whom I have DNA matches.

My first experience began years before I actually had DNA testing.  A woman I will refer to as Jane contacted me because she wanted a picture of her father, whom she had never known.  Her birth resulted from a short affair between her mother and my first cousin once removed.  Her mother told her she bore a resemblance to her biological father, but Jane had never seen a picture of him.  She said she didn’t want to disrupt her biological father’s family’s life or cause any problems, but just wanted a picture.  Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m always a little suspicious when faced with a request like this.  However, after corresponding and speaking with this very nice woman, my internal fraud detector told me she was on the up-and-up.  I sent her a couple of pictures of her father.  Years later, Jane appeared as a close relative in my Ancestry DNA matches and I noticed that she does not list her biological father's family in her public Ancestry family tree.  Confirmation in my mind that my fraud detector was working!

My second experience is fairly recent.  I was contacted by a man I will call Bob, who learned through his DNA test that the man who raised him was not his biological father.  His mother is elderly and experiencing some dementia.  She firmly denies that his father was not his biological father.  His DNA tells him differently.  He contacted me and through a review of our mutual DNA matches I was able to give him some surnames to narrow his search.  Hopefully this situation resolves to the satisfaction to both Bob and his mother.

My most recent experience is with a man whom I will refer to as Sam.  Sam knows he was adopted, but has only been able to obtain non-identifying information about his birth and adoption.  As with Bob, a review of the DNA matches led me to the family line to which he was related.  I began filling in gaps in my own family tree and through my research identified a woman whose history appears to be consistent with the non-identifying birth and adoption information his biological mother gave to the adoption agency.  I didn't find proof, but fairly strong evidence.  I emailed Sam family group sheets and a copy of the woman’s obituary, which included a picture of her.  Sam has closer DNA matches who will hopefully be able to assist him in determining if this woman was his birth mother.

I know that some of you may be questioning my choice to become involved in these difficult situations.  I have questioned this myself and had to make a decision in each case.  It would certainly have been easy to ignore the queries I received from these people.  How does one balance the privacy needs of the biological parents with the desire for knowledge of the children?  Perhaps it is because I have spent 25 years researching my own family history that I feel empathy for those who don’t know theirs.  I feel that a huge part of me would be missing if I didn’t know my family history and that I would have the right to know.  For me, the decision of how much research and assistance I provide will be made on a case by case basis. 

With the recent onslaught of  DNA test advertising, I expect more situations like these to arise and very soon.  When people talk to me about possibly having DNA testing, my advice to them is to be prepared for surprises and that they might not always be pleasant surprises.  Although I have yet to personally have a jaw-dropping experience, I am fully aware that at some point I may learn that I have a close family member I didn’t know existed and will have to deal with the consequences.