Blogosphere forgive me, for I have sinned. It’s been three and a half years since my last blog post.
Yeah, it’s been a while. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say (my Twitter feed provides that evidence), but I just didn’t have much I wanted to write at length. Today I decided to be a bit less brief.
Some years ago, I spent quite a bit of time on genealogical research. I ended up posting most of my results to a family tree on Ancestry.com. As with so many other hobby-like pursuits of this ADDlepated hairless ape, I lost interest at some point. Though I do enjoy a dip in the databases, I haven’t really done much with it all in years.
Last May, I got a message on Ancestry.com. The subject, “Extremely Close Ancestry DNA Match” was puzzling, as I’d never had a DNA test done. I was skeptical, but I read on. It seems that the younger of my two brothers had submitted DNA to Ancestry for testing, and that his DNA provided the match referenced in the message.
The message on Ancestry was from a woman helping a friend, who I’ll call D, research her own family history. D was born in 1950, and had been adopted at the age of 2½. She was told that her birth mother was from Wabash, Indiana. The degree of the DNA match would indicate a familial relationship of aunt/uncle to niece/nephew, or half-sibling
Since my paternal grandfather died in 1944, D could not have been his daughter. It is possible that my maternal grandparents had another child in 1950, but very highly doubtful (in my eyes, at least) that she would be placed for adoption soon thereafter. D also knows her birth name, and it isn’t a match. The most likely scenario is that D is the half-sister of my brother, my other siblings, and myself.
My father’s military records indicate that he was serving at Fort Benjamin Harrison between 1947 and 1951. I find it quite probable that he is D’s father.
So, welcome to the family, sister that we never knew of! I’ll be doing a bit more research on this now, and I’ll post any further updates I might have in another blog entry.
