Finding “New” Relatives

 

We had our DNA sequenced a number of years ago.

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In January of 2018, Larry and his brother received messages through 23andme.

According to 23andme, we are 2^nd cousins. I was born in 1969 in Pennsylvania and was adopted through Catholic Charities. My mother was 19 or 20 years old and from the state of California. I am looking for any information you can give me. [Edited]

This was a no-brainer. Larry only had one female relative who would have been the right age. We lived in Illinois in 1969, and we had no idea this particular woman had ever lived in Pennsylvania. But, as Dr. Gates says on his show Finding Your Roots, “DNA don’t lie.”

Larry forwarded the email to her and asked what she would like him to do with it. She immediately replied, “Give her my contact information.”

We did so.

We located the young lady on Facebook, and were struck by how much she looked like her mother’s other daughter. Yes, they were definitely related.

We invited her to come to California with her family but since she lives on the east coast, she has not done so—yet. We stay in touch with her through Facebook, however.

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On January 11 of this year Larry received another message through 23andme. This message said:

I am on 23andme, and they have you as my 1^st cousin. I never knew who my father was. That is why I am reaching out to you. The man I thought was my father refused to sign my birth certificate. He was 100% Native American. So was my mother. They were from Northern Minnesota. My results say I am 52% European. I don’t look like my siblings. My coloring is lighter. I’d like to find out the truth. [Edited]

Imagine discovering a “new” first cousin at 70+ years of age!

This one was a real puzzle. Larry’s dad had three brothers. (Thank goodness he was off the hook since Larry and his brother are first cousins to her and not half siblings!)

The family moved from North Dakota to California in 1923. As far as we knew, none of the brothers had returned to that area of the country.

We looked at the map. His new cousin, Jeannie, grew up on a reservation just over the state line from the little town in North Dakota where Larry’s family had lived. Hmmm…

I started by eliminating the two eldest brothers. Both had married young and had remained married for over sixty years. We also did not remember either of them ever traveling. One had a mobile home at Balboa. They went there on all their vacations.

This left the third brother. He never married, lived with Larry’s grandparents for much of his life, and when they died, he lived with his oldest sister. However, how he would have connected with Jeannie’s mother remained a mystery.

That is, until Larry remembered an incident from his childhood. He and his father drove his grandmother and this uncle to the train station in Alhambra. There, they boarded a train to visit her sister. Larry was about ten at the time. This would have been the year Jeannie was conceived.

We subsequently learned that Jeannie’s mother was an alcoholic, and this particular uncle of Larry’s was also an alcoholic. We now assumed they met in a bar…

The final clue came when Ancestry posted the 1950 census. We checked each of his grandmother’s sisters. Only one had remained in the Midwest, and the census showed her living in Minneapolis. Her death record showed her in the same city. BINGO!

We began to send Jeannie information on the family, including quite a few family photos. 

She sent a recent one of herself. When I saw it, I was stunned. We had a photo of his grandmother at about the same age, and they looked nearly identical: same features, same expression, same coloring.

She told us she and her younger brother (the youngest of her ten siblings) were removed from her mother’s care due to neglect when she was three and he was a year and a half. They were put into the foster system. She had one good foster home and one abusive one. Fortunately, she found a school counselor who removed her from that home and took her home to live.

She married young, but she must have inherited the Collins long-marriage gene because she and her husband celebrated their 50^th anniversary in April. They have three sons, all successful with families.

It took us several days to figure all this out, but we were quite certain we now had the relationship correct. (We checked with Larry’s brother and a couple of other cousins. They agreed with our conclusions. And we confirmed that the other two brothers never went back to the area once the family moved to California.)

We invited Jeannie and her husband to come for a visit and to meet some of the family. They decided to make the trip their 50^th anniversary celebration, and they arrived mid-June for a few days.

Meanwhile, we continued to send her information and more photos.

Of course, the grandparents and all her aunts and uncles, as well as her father, are gone. But we planned a visit to the graveyard where they are buried for their visit. Larry’s brother, Casey, went with us.

I ordered matching t-shirts for the five of us. They say: Collins Family 2022. We wanted to emphasize that she is, was, and always would be a member of the family.

She said she had a little trepidation as they exited the plane, concerned that we would actually be there to meet them. However, as soon as we saw one another, we felt a bond.

We picked up Casey at his house, and he asked them in for a moment. As she walked by him, Casey said, “You look just like my grandma.” He had seen the same resemblance I had from her photo.

The day before they arrived, I made up about a dozen small bouquets. We took these to the cemetery with us and placed them on the family graves.

Most of the family are buried in the same area. (They purchased their plots when the cemetery first opened, and they got them al about the same time.)

We found Larry’s grandparents first.

Then we located the eldest brother and his wife.

We found several of the others, and then we located Jeannie’s father. She was able to place a bouquet on his grave. It wasn’t the same as meeting him in person, but at least she now knows who he is and where he is buried.

We drove past our first home where a cousin now lives. She had a previous commitment and wasn’t able to join us for the day.

Then we went by the house where Larry’s grandparents lived in Arcadia, and where his uncle lived. Last, we drove by his aunt’s home where he lived when he died.

Our last stop for the day was for a late lunch at Clearman’s North Woods Inn, where the family had celebrated many occasions.

We had a lovely day together, and it felt as though we had known each other forever.

During their stay, we went through more of the family pictures, and I put together a group to send to her.

We spent a lovely day at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Jeannie enjoyed hearing about the history of the Native Americans from this part of the country.

One of her “bucket list” items was to put her feet in the Pacific Ocean. She had done so in the Atlantic and also the Gulf of Mexico. So, we went down to San Clemente, and Jeannie fulfilled her goal.

Before they left, we heard from one of Larry’s cousins. Years ago, she had been given their aunt June’s cedar chest. She asked if Jeannie would like to have it. She was thrilled.

It has been shipped and should arrive in Minnesota soon.

We couldn’t give Jeannie her father, but we did try to introduce him and the rest of her relatives to her. She and her family have a standing invitation to visit again.

 

Have you ever discovered “new” family members via DNA?