@Momofadult There is an opt-out. Besides that, I wonder how many people use their real names. (The connections, distant cousins and such, that I have seen are not relevant to our lives - I recognize no names and wouldn’t care much even if I did. And there’s no way our pseudonyms are going to be recognizable.)
1 Like
MIL found out later in life that she was adopted, the story was one of those long-kept family secrets. She knew nothing of her biological family history at all. Just vague speculation. About 3 years ago BIL had her send a DNA sample to Ancestry and after some significant sleuthing he managed to find her birth family. At age 83 she made contact with her half-siblings and their families, and has plans to finally meet in person later this month. So that’s a cool story.
D, on the other hand, sent a sample to 23andMe and got a totally expected, boring result.
1 Like
Since I last posted I decided to log into my ancestry account. I received another surprise as now there is another person listed as my 1st-2nd cousin. It’s odd because, I kept receiving an error message when I tried to send a message. The account is managed by another person. I am quite intrigued because I know all of my 1st -3rd cousins on my moms side, and I thought I knew most of them all on my dads side until he decided to announce he had half siblings last year which he had never mentioned before.
I grew up knowing all four of my great grandmothers, and one great grandfather last one passing when I was 37, so since I had my kids young they actually knew and spent time with their great great grandparents.
1 Like
Hmm… I realized last year that my mom had a “gap” in her timeline when I was writing her obituary. Around the age of 20, finished a two year degree but did not start at her 4 year college until over a year later. I asked my dad about it (just trying to get the dates right), and was pretty abruptly shut down by him. I have been wondering about it (and one of the things I’ve wondered is if I have an unknown half sib somewhere…). Probably not, but who knows? Maybe ancestry.com does…
1 Like
@intparent wow that’s intriguing. I know in 2015 Ohio decided to open birth records for adoptions that were finalized between January 1, 1964 to September 18, 1996. There were some unhappy folk to say the least.
1 Like
I am an amateur genealogist. I first used 23andme several years ago when you could get medical genetic results , much cheaper than going through the medical establishment. I was able to find out about two important inherited conditions.
Since then I became more interested in genealogy and also had an ancestry.com test done, just because that’s the only way to access their database of people. Both my test results are very very similar and not surprising. I have uploaded the results to other sites to maximize my chances of finding people and this has gotten results.
I knew very little about one side of my family. I have “met” two first cousins on that side through this process.One cousin was very skittish and even after I correctly answered all his test questions, he never responded again.
My other contact was the child of my first cousin. Through that contact I have now talked on the phone with and shared pictures with my 89 year old first cousin. This cousin had stories of my grandparents who died before I was born. I had very few family stories of that side, and no personal experience, so this has been very special. We have plans to meet when I am next in their area.
On the other side of my family, where I pretty much know everything about everybody, I am amazed by how many of my relatives are online. I don’t even try to contact most of them because I have innumerable cousins of varying degrees.
One distant cousin on that side did contact me and through that connection, I now have the 1860 immigration ship’s log and marriage certificate of my great great grandmother. This cousin is descended from her sister who immigrated with her. He took it upon himself to track down “my” sister’s marriage record and provide it to me!
I have great reservations about the privacy aspect and have taken all the precautions I can, but still…
I would love my kids and siblings to be tested but because of the privacy aspect, I have never encouraged anyone to get it done. It’s not to be taken lightly. I’ve had my data on other sites hacked many times (never used nefariously so far) including many very reputable sites such as a medical company, a government agency, credit bureau (!) etc., so I have no faith that anything’s fail-proof.
The information, joy, and engagement I get from doing this trump my privacy concerns.
A caveat to people who think they know everything about their family: in bygone years there were many ways of dealing with out of wedlock pregnancies, so it’s almost a sure bet there was a case of this in your family, and there are lots of adoptees out there trying to put the pieces together. I recently learned of a possible occurrence in our family that I had never heard a whisper about previously. If this person (who possibly was adopted within the family) were to do a DNA test and the rumor is true, LOTS of people would be able to figure it out online. So you do have to be ready for this.
The connection to Maine is very interesting. When my grandmother on that side came to America, she and her husband moved up there to be with family. Their oldest D, my aunt, was born in Maine. They moved back to NYC shortly thereafter because my grandfather couldn’t get work there. I apparently still have family up there but I don’t really know them.
1 Like
I went on the site under a fake name with a gmail address just for that purpose. I opted out of being contacted by family. I can’t stand most of the relatives I actually know, why would I want to find more?
H, OTOH, is really trying hard to find people. It’s always been a question as to whether or not his father was sired by the same man who fathered his older siblings. H had found a cousin who was willing to do the test, but the guy died before they got their acts together to do it. His D said she would do it and then cut off contact. That’s actually how I had the kit to do it, I used the one that I had purchased for the cousin.
1 Like
All of the ancestors that I know come from the British Isles. However, I have always wondered about my skin tone as it is fairly dark and I tan very easily. I did 23 & me and lo and behold, 35.6% Italian! I am thinking Roman soldiers in Britian. The other big chunk, 57.7% is Scandinavian- I would guess Vikings are involved and if you saw my eldest daughter’s hair, you would agree- wiry and red. A friend of mine said that the women in my background must have had a hard life and I think she is right.
@Madison85 and @lookingforward - my ancestors were in the Hartford area in the 1630’s too. I know one came over on the ship Lyon.
Searching for birth families has had this good/bad side to it for years. I happen to have a lot of friends who were adopted and I’d say many more unhappy endings than exciting reunions after searching for the birth family. Even if the first contact was good, as time past they broke again from the birth families. Nature v. nurture proved nurture was stronger.
1 Like
I’m not concerned someone learns my genetic history. Nor that DH’s details are out there. He’s part of that vast pool that has links to (if you’ve ever really dug for facts, not just someone else’s false assumptions) Eleanor Roosevelt, the Bushes, and all. What interested me more on his side was the unknowns in history once in the US. And luckily, there’s a lot more recorded than who begat whom.
I’m still wondering about Finnish, considering how many others were seafarers or warriors in foreign lands. Eg, why not Portuguese?
1 Like
I was adopted over 60 years and filled my empty nest using DNA to identify my birth father. I had located my birth mother in 1999, and although it turned out that we lived about 10 miles from each other, she did not want contact. I honored that, but after I had my first DNA test (Ancestry.com), the knowledge of who she was was quite helpful in narrowing down paternal versus maternal matches. Also the DNA test revealed that one old friend is actually a cousin on the maternal side; coincidentally, her daughter and my daughter were the two finalists for an areawide academic honor their senior year of high school-cousin v. cousin, unknown to us!
One 2d cousin I contacted was an extremely nice woman who got as interested in tracking down our cross as I was, and it turned out we were related on both my maternal and paternal sides. Ultimately she sent me a picture of a man, and as soon as I saw him, I knew in my heart I was looking at my father. The picture was from his recent obituary, which confirmed facts that I had been given by the adoption agency. Although all the DNA looked right, I did nothing about the knowledge at the time since I had no hard and fast evidence, but fast forward a year and I finally decided to test with 23andme, the last of the 3 major testers at the time. Lo and behold one of the man’s sons had tested and showed up as my half brother. I messaged him and asked if he would like to explore the cross and about 7 months later I finally heard from one of the half sisters. It turned out there are 4 children and they all live within twenty minutes of me too. The sister and I wrote back and forth for three months and by end of September we were ready to meet. “The sisters” (3 of us) have now met 3 times and have had a wonderful time. Having an unknown older half sister rocked their world to say the least, but they have been super good sports.
I read a few adoption pages on Facebook, and I know all the stories aren’t happy. And some start happy, but then go south. Right now, however, it is wonderful to have new friends and closure to a very open issue in my life.
On those FB pages I have also read COUNTLESS stories of people who did DNA to see their ethnicity and discovered their father was not their father or a similar event up the chain which meant that their genetics were not what they have been told. Thus, if you think you know it all and a test is of no value to you, be prepared for the possibility of a surprise. I always knew I was adopted, so I knew what I was looking for, but I feel sorry for the stories told by some of these people who feel their identity has been ripped away by the testing.
1 Like
As I mentioned earlier, my dad informed me that he had half siblings which he had never mentioned he gave me one name and we found them in five minutes in FB, he looks just like my dad even though they have different mothers. It turns out there are four of them and their father never mentioned my dad. His. One of his brothers got married last year and invited my dad up and he was able to meet his siblings. One of them wants nothing to do with my dad but he keeps in contact with the others.
1 Like
It never even occurred to me to use a pseudonym on the site I registered on. That said, some woman who was adopted and looking for relatives got all weird when I asked a very simple, generic question in response to her query, as I was being a bit cautious. As she had been the first person to contact me and I wasn’t familiar with the site. Her response justified my decision to have been cautious and I politely wished her well and didn’t respond further.
Separate question- what is the difference between what you get (aside from when medical stuff was available on
23 and me) on ancestry.com vs 23 and me?
About cautious: online, I found relatives of a touring jazz band DH’s father played with. My contact was with the granddaughter of the female singer- and fine, until this gal told her grandmother. Contact cut off. (My gal even changed her screen name.) Later, coincidentally found a son of another. I put him in contact with the first and said, heads up, something is clearly off where DH’s father is concerned, he’s long gone and we’re just curious. And after contact #2 emailed #1, he dropped out, too. Something must have been mighty off with DH’s dad, all those years ago. He was very young when he ran off with them and anything is possible.
My BIL is adopted and was the product of a war relationship, as were most of his found siblings. He and his wife (my sister) did the 23nme.
BIL has been trying really hard to form his “family” so he is trying hard to get us (my husband and I) to find our distant relatives. BIL is constantly on the Ancestry site. No surprise then, that we were contacted, via my BIL, for my husband’s family. The man even found my dd’s info!
The person wanted to meet my husband and dh’s last surviving uncle in California.
Husband’s father had recently passed away and the family’s emotions were still raw when my BIL called. We explained to BIL that the family couldn’t meet, given the health of the uncle (age 96), and that the emotions were still raw and hard.
Apparently BIL and the long-lost relative were insistent and “pushy”. The guy insisted that he had a right to the information from the uncle. DH nipped it in the bud with BIL and told him, “We just had my Dad die; have him read the obit because Uncle can’t recall anything, anyway. He has the ‘right’ to that information. No meeting is going to happen; we’re done!”
My dad has this too and he is northern Italian and Irish (no DMA testing but we know his parents came over on the boats!) I am guessing the Irish part can be responsible for the Dupuytrens since there is no scandinavian blood that we know of 
I always thought it was a very rare condition so I was surprised to see a couple of people mention it here!
1 Like
This is all fascinating! Thanks to all who have shared personal stories of their own and friends.
1 Like
This is so interesting. H is having surgery for Dupuytren’s tomorrow! His ancestry is Irish and German, as far as we know.
1 Like
I think they both having Vikings way back there somewhere… 
@my-3-sons, I know it is late in the game, but did your husband explore the enzyme injections discussed in this article with his doctor? It is relatively new, and won’t work in all cases, but worked for my dad:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dupuytrens-contracture/basics/treatment/con-20024378
1 Like