SheenaLMartin.com

I’ve been working on and off for MONTHS and MONTHS on a case for a 50-something friend whose husband is a cousin from my Italian side.

I’ve had the family narrowed down for months.  And she has a match, at 544 cms, who’s also obviously a cousin in a similar age range, who is also an adoptee and knew NOTHING.

Well, over the weekend a new “half brother” match showed up for the friend.   Making me think well, she’s found out her info – until it’s revealed HER BIRTH DAD IS ADOPTED and while he tracked down info (which I do not have as of yet, but KNOW what family they’re from…) and he was told to never contact them again.  I hope he has some info…

I learned another lesson – you can be circling the drain and “thisclose” but if there’s other adoptions or mis-attributed parentage sometimes it is unsolvable, until a really close match shows up!

More later, when info is revealed.

Native American ancestry is a story told in many, many American families.  There’s still some myth attached, that if you can prove it there’s some kind of benefits and money coming your way, or just the romance of it all.

Odds are, there is NOT any that’s going to show up, even if your family stories have a hint of truth.  Your ancestors circa 1780 are many generations diluted by this point,  it needs to be prevalent in the last 3 or maybe 4 generations to show up in you.

I have done my adopted dad’s DNA.  He is 87% UK – no nuance, pure English and Scottish.  Except for the 4% Native American and 2% North Africa.   I found his grandmother’s family, included her grandfather called “Injun Joe” on the Dawes rolls.  The rejected Dawes roles, but a fully written out story, about an English soldier and his Native American bride, 2 sons, who were orphaned in the 1830’s in Kentucky.  But no documentation for Joe to prove it, and he was rejected.

Now does that entitle anyone to anything now?  Of course not.  Mostly, people were trying for free land in the Indian Territories. That’s how many of these myths start, greed.   And it’s why people like Elizabeth Warren are reluctant to test, because it’s very likely so diluted by time, generations and recombination and randomness, it’s not going to show up.

I’ve been working a case for a chick my age-ish, gave up a child for adoption.  I helped put up her DNA results last year, but there was no one close looking for her, and when you’re the legal adult who legally relinquishes said child… There’s only so much you can do… but putting your DNA out there, in this day and age, and anyone who is even slightly curious will end up matching you.

I asked about her highest match, who appeared to be a nephew, but since her response wasn’t anything, and I knew of no known reason to dig deeper.  She didn’t ask me to help dig into her family tree etc, she just wanted to be there in case it could help her find her son, see if he’d been searching. (He’d be almost 40)

So I check here and there, see if new matches pop up.  But a couple weeks ago, I got a message from her highest match.  750 cms, 21 segments = half nephew zone.  His brief note within Ancestry was “my dad was adopted, I’m trying to find his birth family.”

Mind blown, etc.  What a quick look further at him, and his shared matches with “B” and lo and behold, she has a different father than her siblings.  The infamous “NPE”  She blown away, and apparently the match is blown away, because now zero response.  But I’ve solved it!  It’s either the sadly dead brother or the alive brother in Arizona.  Now how do you approach an 80 year old??

My vote is always TRUTH.  Concise as possible (being a girl) TRUTH.  Someone’s got two more kids he didn’t know about…

Genetic Genealogy lesson for the day, always, even if they ask just about one specific aspect… look at the whole tree, the whole cousin matches.  Never Assume…

#DNAtruth

I’m hoping to have this site be the place where other adoptees can come, and find information for doing their own search. Truth about themselves. Truth about the process.  I am in my early 50’s, and used plain ‘ol detective skills to find my birth mother in 1994, but it took DNA results and 6 months of sleuthing to figure out my birth father.  The answers are there, in your DNA.