Someone I know just told me about a friend who sent in a blood sample to have his ancestry researched. When people send in for these tests, they expect to learn about great grandparents and their ancestors, and what part of the world their ancestors come from. He got a surprise. A woman who he had never met on the other side of the country had had her blood researched previous to his test and was therefore in the database before his search was done. He was informed in his test results that he had a daughter that he previously had no clue even existed. The test identified her enough that she was very easy for him to contact. He did recall having relations with her mother several decades ago. This woman's mother had kept his paternity a secret from him and from her daughter. Now late in his life, he and his adult children are planning to meet this woman who they plan on embracing as family. Has anyone else heard about this happening before?

This technology could change the whole family landscape and routinely reveal things that previously went unknown. I can also see this affecting church leaders. Anything they sanction when knowing about these things and counseling people, could some day be routinely revealed. This could cause people to question the decisions of those church leaders who often conspire with people to hide paternity knowledge from fathers, when it is convenient to do so and they figure that no one will ever find out. Now people can find out the truth of these things, long after birth records have been lost, sealed by courts, or somehow buaried.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2019 09:02AM by azsteve.

My step nieces found a brother that way. Everyone has met, their dad appears to have recovered from the shock and it all seems very friendly.

They are excited to have a brother.

None of the DNA testing services open to the general public use blood samples (as far as I know), they all use saliva samples. That makes me a little suspicious about this story.

That said, I know a young woman who did a DNA analysis and within a couple weeks found out who her birth mother was (she's an adoptee). They have met and are getting along swimmingly.

In my own ancestry line there is a single mother three generations back from the tested relative, four back from me. It appears the father was a visiting teacher from two states away, just before the outbreak of the Civil War. The person claiming to have ferreted this out from a single sample is LDS, so I am suspicious this is a heavily embroidered story. OTOH, my TBM relatives have been claiming for decades that this woman must have been married though they never could find any hint of marriage or divorce records, but she was in multiple census records. I always annoyed mom by saying she probably never married, though she had three children. It appears I was right.

My fifty year old girlfriend found out her deceased Dad wasn’t really her Dad, but one of his and her Moms high school friends before both men got shipped to Vietnam. She’s now in a quandary as to whether or not to tell her Mom she knows and if she should even mention to her birth Dad that she exists.

The opposite happened for me. When my grandmother on my dad's side died, my sister said she'd always wondered if maybe my mom had fooled around with a neighbor. I don't look much like my dad and he and I always had a fractious relationship.

I took the test and what do you know? One of my cousins on my dad's side showed up as my first cousin. So now I know my mom was faithful after all... of course, I also know my sister is kind of a bitch for putting that in my head.

One of my close friends went on Ancestry and found out her father had a whole different family she didn't know about (none of these people are Mormon) She visited her half sisters 3 states over. No DNA tests. However, there is some obvious resemblance.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2019 11:21AM by Aquarius123.

A couple months ago, a friend of mine said his 50 year old son came to his house and said "hi, grandpa". Friend has a 25 yo grandson that the father and grandfather knew nothing about.

Apparently this isn't a rare situation.

If everyone had a DNA test, almost everyone's family tree would need to be re-done.

I had my DNA tested at three different sites (Ancestry, Family Tree, and 23 and Me). I was HOPING I'd find something that indicated my family tree needed to be redone. But nope. All three sites gave the same results. And all results confirmed the genealogy that my Mormon relatives have done. I'm sure a woman could have committed adultery with her husband's brother somewhere along the line. But if there was any hanky panky it was definitely with members of the same specific ethnic groups.

I was disappointed I didn't uncover any hidden family scandals!

bezoar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm sure a woman could have committed
> adultery with her husband's brother somewhere
> along the line. But if there was any hanky panky
> it was definitely with members of the same
> specific ethnic groups.
>
> I was disappointed I didn't uncover any hidden
> family scandals!

I can understand the feeling, but the reality (even if knowing the reality answers "tons" of previously unanswerable questions) can be more difficult to assimilate than you might imagine.

found out his "father" isn't his father. His mother slept around and there was always that idea that his father wasn't his real father. He and his "father" never got along. He was abused as a child.

He is about 50 years old and he finally met his real father. They get along GREAT! It has been wonderful for him to find his father.

Find undiscovered relatives - but no DNA links showing Neanderthal or other way back traces still?

A friend of mine (retirement aged) discovered that she has a brother. Thinking back, there was a summer when her widowed-mother sent my friend to live at a relative's house two states away. Now we know why: the widowed mother carried the pregnancy to term and put the resulting baby boy up for adoption.

The widowed mother had suffered for some years from Alzheimer's and died shortly after the truth came out. My friend and her newly-discovered brother get along swimmingly.

Friend is a staunch Catholic and was raised in a very Catholic home.

Reading these stories is forcing me, FORCING ME!, to consider the possibility, even the likelihood, that there are men and women in this world who have inappropriate (in the long run) carnal relations without, you know, 'protection'!

What are/were these people thinking?!?!

I did both Ancestry and 23andMe. I appear very Northern European, and my DNA tests confirmed that, but I also have a little bit of sub-Saharan African and West African. I loved finding that out. I now joke about how it is obvious looking at me that I have black ancestors. I hope lots of prejudiced people will have similar results.

Also, I have more Neanderthal DNA that 99% of people they have tested. Fun stuff!

C2NR --- You sparked something that might have some major impacts in the future.

Congress has started hearings on reparation for black slavery.

If these DNA test show a person has some black ancestry in the family, no matter how little, could that person be eligible for the reparation if it becomes law?

tumwater Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If these DNA test show a person has some black
> ancestry in the family, no matter how little,
> could that person be eligible for the reparation
> if it becomes law?

That would depend on whether or not that person meets the defined legal standard (whatever that might turn out to be).

Also: "black" ancestry doesn't necessarily mean slave ancestry, and slave ancestry is the principal focus of reparations. I am fairly sure that this issue would also be addressed by any law which might be passed.

Defining (as much as is possible) black slave ancestry also comes with a huge amount of helpful collateral data, such as the known data from specific geographic areas where the certainty of SLAVE (not just "black") ancestry would be somewhere in the high 90s. Once one of those "old slave" lines is identified, then recent generations of those lines would be very easy to determine definitively.

That's awesome, C2NR. Where in West Africa?

I was excited to see my ancestry results a few years back. It's amazing how specific they can get with the countries. I have 90% West African with the two biggest clusters listed as Cameroon/Congo/Bantu peoples and then Benin/Togo. The other percentages are European and Native American.

One of my brothers tests 5% positive for African DNA in his genetic makeup from the same ancestry company that doesn't find any in my DNA. They also find 47% Irish/British/Scottish/Welsh in him and only 27% in me. Go figure.

The same company tells me I'm 5% Greek and 10% Balkan. To his 5% African and 10% West Asian. And we come from the same set of parents and share 35% DNA.

It's not the same company that determined my being predominantly Swiss however. That company is the one I paid, and it says it stands behind its claim. They've gotten more refined as time has progressed, so they say.

A bit off-topic, but I was speaking with a man today who has a very obviously French last name. If you have ever studied the French language, then the spelling pattern and pronunciation would be immediately recognizable to you. He was telling me that he had recently had his DNA analyzed, and much to his surprise, he's more than a quarter French! And I was thinking, Um-hmm.

I have a friend and former work colleague who discovered a few years ago that she and her brother had a half brother due to an affair their father had had decades before. (My friend is in her mid-60s.) Both her parents had already died when she found out about the half brother. As far as they know, her father had never even realized he had a son from the affair, as he and the other woman were only seeing each other a short time, and then she moved out of the area. In any case, fortunately, my friend and her brother were happy to meet their "new" brother. She even has a photo on her mantle piece of all three of them together.

I also had my hair cut a couple of years ago by a woman who told me a similar story; she found out through an Ancestry-type test that she had a brother whose mother was a woman her father had had an affair with. In this case, though, her dad had known about the son and kept it a secret from his wife and other kids. She also told me that she was glad to meet and get to know her half brother.

In both of these instances, all the people involved were older (60+), and all the parents were dead. I do think that might make a difference in the degree of equanimity one has (or doesn't have) reacting to that type of news.

My mom's father was stationed in the Philippines during WW2. I've always joked with her that she probably has half siblings over there, as her parents weren't married at the time and my grandpa wasn't a mormon yet. Maybe one day these tests will prove me right!

Would you or would you not want to know your paternity or maternity, if it had been hidden from you all of your life?

I, for one, would want to know. Most people I think would fall into that category, ie, wanting to know the truth of their origins and familial background.

To deny someone this truth is to deny them their history. And that is a travesty. Everyone is entitled to know their origins and genetic history, where possible.

For medical reasons alone is essential. For informational and historical reasons satisfies the soul's longing to know who and where your ancestors are and from. And learning their histories becomes a part of your history, connecting you to them. The past is always with us ... we are connected travelers in time.

I recently did the 23 and me DNA test. My sister just sent hers in. We're not expecting any surprises between the two of us. But I read that as many as 1 in 10 people who do these tests find out that their father or one of their grandfathers isn't who they thought he was.

I think it's pretty funny that the church might get some embarrassing info come out, given that they were the ones pushing so hard for genealogy. Too bad we didn't have this when Joseph Smith was out corrupting the youthful women who believed his claims.

This is why I think doing genealogy is pointless, especially using the father's line.

Before DNA, for thousands of years, women no doubt occasionally lied (or couldn't be sure) who the father was. Once you get back a few generations, there's a good chance some of the ancestors people think they have weren't even related.

Even if the woman had a fling with the butcher, he might also be the same nationality as the majority where she lived. So, if the DNA confirms family stories, we still can't be ceertian about the exact parent.

So we have goofy Mormons "sealing" by proxy people to their parents who might not even be their parents. It's such pointless busywork.

I have a friend who has discovered two older half sisters...her father was quite the Romeo before he married. Her father is deceased so they don’t know, but she assumes she probably has other 1/2 siblings! Interestingly...both sisters were raised by men they thought was their father and the men believed it also. Both mothers knows the men weren’t their fathers, but never said anything!

Another friend recently found a 1/2 brother that his dad fathered with a 1st wife no one knew about...his father had abandoned them...and disappeared and started a whole new family!