Helping people understand their DNA tests and identify some of those cousins on the match list is one of my favorite tasks, and over the past month I am pleased to say that I have identified birth fathers for two more people!
Both people, one male and one female, were born during the 1960s and are both now parents and grandparents themselves. All these years they have not known who their birth father was. Well, now they know!
First is a friend living in the Pacific Northwest. The woman (SF) contacted me after learning that I had identified both birth mother and birth father of PB, my husband's half brother. For a bit of history on this, see my blog article published August 2019 for more information on MSH (my sweet husband) and his two half-brothers.
SF was born in Bozeman, Montana, in the 1960s, and placed for adoption at 4-months of age. She was the youngest child in a large farm family, growing up with older brothers and sisters who were all adopted. As with many adopted children, she longed to know the circumstances of her birth and why she was placed. She was able to identify and meet her birth mom prior to her passing about ten years ago, but the woman was not able or willing to share who SF's birth father was.
With the help of DNA testing, my research identified the two ancestral couples who were her great-grandparents. Both couples were primarily from Montana, lived between the mid 1800s up to the mid 1900s, and between them there were 15 children and more than 30 grandchildren. Building a research tree and locating DNA matches for SF who fit in these trees was key.
After many months of work, I requested one person take a DNA test, suspecting she was either a first cousin or a half-sister. With over 1700 cM shared, half-sibling it was. Birth father is deceased, but SF is now connected with three older half-sisters.
Second is a gentleman (AJ) who was born in Vietnam in the 1960s and raised by a single-mom. His father was a US soldier stationed there. A sister who was age 12 at the time of her mom's pregnancy had quite a few memories about the man who lived with them while stationed there. When AJ appeared on my husband's match list in January 2023, I immediately checked to see if he was also on the list of MSH's two half-brothers. He was, so I wrote an email thru Ancestry's message system asking if he would like to talk. As he lives in Vietnam and does not speak English, we communicated via a family friend in the US who was the daughter of a Japanese mother and US soldier father who had married prior to moving to the US. I was given access to AJ's DNA test and at the top of the list were second cousins of my husband and his half-brothers. We've met one of the women and her husband at a family reunion, so I reached out to her and explained my findings. She and her sisters reached out to AJ, resulting in his connection to nine half siblings on this side of the Pacific Ocean.
I'm working with two more clients who are searching for their fathers, so watch for another article telling about those projects, hopefully this Spring!
