DNA Success

My ‘brick wall’ began when I was eight years old and was told by a fellow pupil that my mother was not my ‘real’ mother. Over the next 70 years, I went on a long journey to find the answers to “Who do you think you are?”.

I traced my birth mother when I was in my 20s but, sadly, she did not want contact. In the 1980s, I tried again to make a connection with her but was met with another brick wall. However, in her rather terse reply, she did give me a very minimum amount of information about my father saying that he was already married (unknown to her at the time), could/would not want any further contact with her and thus “your birth was my problem alone”. She died many years ago and I thought I would never know anything more about my heritage. But along came DNA! I took the test through Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk/dna) and all has been revealed!

After my DNA results were shown on Ancestry, I was contacted by a man claiming to be my second cousin but none of my family names matched his and so I declined any further contact with him. This was a huge mistake! Two years later, I came across a person on an Ancestry family tree who was to help me discover the identity of my father which, in turn, has led to my half-siblings.

My big mistake was dismissing the person claiming to be my second cousin. If none of my family surnames matched with his (and I only knew my maternal family names) then he must be related to my paternal family. Suddenly the light went on – wow!

It took a lot of detective work using both family trees, and the enormous help I was receiving from my contact, before my father’s name looked like the very best possibility. Contact was made with one of his close relatives, who agreed to take a DNA test. The results showed that there was no doubt that my father had been identified, although he had passed away over 30 years previously. Hurrah for DNA and the help from those more knowledgeable then me!

Name and address provided

EDITOR REPLIES: I’m glad that DNA testing has proved so successful for you. Knowing where we come from is an important part of knowing who we are.