Test in Progress

Sleuthing Ancestry Often Uncovers Family Secrets, Leads to More Questions

By Lisa Gregory

It was meant as a lighthearted joke, but no one was laughing. 

When Frederick resident Frances decided to take a DNA test with an at-home kit, she phoned her mother and kidded, “So, if there are any skeletons in your closet, now is the time to tell me.”

But there was no laughter from her mother. “Just dead silence on her end,” says Frances, who asked that her real name not be used for this story.

Through the DNA test and amateur investigation, Frances learned the truth about her past: She was conceived from a donor sperm. Not only that, but she also has 13 half-siblings, a number that could increase. “Not quite what I was expecting,” she says now.

Since 2007, when 23andMe became the first company to offer saliva-based, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, millions of people have taken the step. In doing so, many have learned not only who they are but who they are not. 

“You have two family trees,” says Jeanie Watts, a Frederick genealogist. “You have a paper tree that is documented as far back as you can document it. Then you have the genetic tree. It might match. It may not. Chances are somewhere along the line it’s not going to match.”

For example, Watts had one client, a staunch Republican, who wondered if he might be related to a president. “He was,” says Watts. “Barack Obama. They were distant cousins. He almost had a coronary and told me, ‘That’s impossible.’”

Unexpected DNA findings can, in the cases of those like Frances, be truly traumatizing. In fact, support groups now exist to help those affected by the results. Many are also engaging in therapy to process the information they have received. 

“Part of the identity we have for ourselves is based upon stories we’ve been told in our family,” says Greg Markway, a St. Louis-based clinical psychologist whose interest in genealogy began while searching for the roots of his grandfather. “And a whole lot of people are finding out that some of those stories weren’t true.”

As a result, the idea of family secrets could become a thing of the past. “Secrets will no longer be as powerful,” says Markway, who plans to write a book about his own genealogical search, “and there will be fewer incentives to keep secrets because that secret is going to come out one way or another.”

“I was going to take it to the grave”

With her own family’s secret revealed, Frances was left to reevaluate who she really is and where she belongs, a story that began for her with a donor conception in 1980. “The medical staff at the time told my parents to never tell me because it would ruin my life,” she says.

Through the DNA test, she first learned she had a half-sister. “I thought, oh, my gosh, my dad had an affair,” she says. She told her older brother, whom she would eventually learn was also donor-conceived with a different father. “Genetically speaking, we’re half-siblings,” she says. 

At her brother’s urging, Frances reached out to the half-sister, who responded immediately, saying, “I was born via sperm donation. Do you know who our father is?” recalls Frances. “I was like, oh, my God, my dad donated sperm.” 

The half-sister asked what her father did for a living. “I said he was a career fireman,” says Frances. The half-sister said she had been told that their shared biological father was a medical professional. “She told me, ‘You need to call your mom,” says Frances. “The minute she heard that my dad was a fireman, she knew that I was also donor conceived.”

The clinic where Frances was conceived used samples from doctors and medical residents. “My donor donated twice a week for four years,” says Frances. 

Frances and her half-siblings all grew up “within 30 minutes of each other,” she says. “One of my friends from high school, who I was on the dance team with and knew since middle school, we share a donor. She didn’t know either.” 

Frances had to have a conversation with her mother, not an easy one. Her father had died by this time. “I told her, ‘I have a sibling and she is donor-conceived,’” says Frances. Her mother began crying. “She said, ‘I was never going to tell you. I was going to take it to the grave.’”

Frances comforted her mother. “They wanted a family and tried so hard, and this was the only way to make it happen,” she says. “I told her, ‘I’m not mad. I’m not upset. If you didn’t do it, I wouldn’t be here.’”

“Does your brother know?” her mother responded. “I don’t want him to know.”

Frances admits that as a child she experienced an emotional disconnect with her father, who struggled with alcohol. “He moved out when I was around 8,” she says. Her mother, through it all, stayed the course and protected the family secrets, even in extreme ways.

Frances suffered from severe Crohn’s disease during her teen years. When doctors asked for a medical history, her mother did not flinch at providing her estranged husband’s history. “The lie had become so ingrained in her,” says Frances. “She was determined that this was my father, and this was my medical history.”

Following her contact with her half-sister, Frances tracked down many other half-siblings. She and several of them have even found and met the donor after “some Google sleuthing,” says Frances. He was indeed a resident who was married with a child of his own when he became a donor. “They needed to put food on the table,” she says. “His wife knew what he was doing.”

Frances and the others were eventually welcomed into the donor’s home, including at Thanksgiving. “One of the first times I went over there, his wife grabs me and runs upstairs with me,” says Frances. “She takes me into their office and points at a picture. She said, ‘Look at that picture. That’s you.’ It was his mother’s wedding picture.”

Frances had already been in therapy when she learned of her conception and half-siblings, but she found it helpful with processing the new revelation. But uncovering the past “hurt my relationship with my mom,” she says. “She really had a hard time that I wanted to have a relationship with these people.”

There are other unhealed wounds. “My intended father was not a father, and my actual father was not a father,” Frances says. “I am fatherless.” 

“She looked like her mother”

Through DNA testing, Steve (also not his real name) didn’t discover a passel of half-siblings but he did learn about a first cousin he never knew existed. Steve is white. His cousin is biracial. 

Steve was delighted to add another branch to the family tree. However, other family members were not so enthusiastic. “My aunt had a drinking problem,” says Steve. She was married to Steve’s uncle when she conceived his cousin. “I think she got drunk and something happened,” he says. According to Steve, his aunt went away to have the baby but then brought the newborn back home with her. 

 “My uncle made her give the baby up for adoption,” he says. Steve says he knew nothing of this until he spoke with the cousin. For him, there was no denying her. “I told her that I was going to send her a photograph and that she was going to be amazed at how much she looked like her mother,” he says. 

This is not the first time Steve’s lineage has crossed racial lines. He has one ancestor, a white man, who married a freed enslaved person. He welcomes this family history much as he has welcomed his new family member. “Why should the color of our skin matter?” he says. 

Not all DNA surprises involve unknown family members, however. Sometimes it’s a person discovering their identity is not what they believed it was. Cecilia (also not her real name) grew up enthralled by all things Spanish.

“I was told my whole life that I was Spanish-Irish,” she says. This information came from her grandmother, says Cecilia, who embraced her heritage. “I lived in Spain twice and taught Spanish,” she says. 

The language just rolled off her tongue, marveling even native speakers, which she attributed to her Spanish roots.

Except she didn’t have any. 

While living in Alaska several years ago, Cecilia and her husband adopted a young girl who came with a surprise of her own. “She knew she was part Alaskan Native (Athabaskan), but her mother was a sex worker, so she had no idea who the dad was,” says Cecilia. 

Cecilia and her daughter both took DNA tests. That’s when Cecilia learned that she was “100 percent not Spanish,” she says. “And a dangerous percentage of Neanderthal. We all had a good laugh.”

Her daughter? “Come to find out she is half-Spanish,” says Cecilia. “We adopted a Spanish girl!”

“Do you want the good, bad and ugly?”

Genealogist Watts initially became interested in the profession because she wanted to learn all she could about the father she never met. “My father was married,” she says. “My mother knew he was married. But he gave all the pretty lies: ‘I love you. My marriage is over. I’m going to divorce her and marry you.’” However, when her mother discovered she was pregnant, “He said, ‘I can’t leave my wife,’” she says. 

Her mother never lied to Watts about who her father was. On her 16th birthday, “my mom gave me a little cardboard jewelry box with his address and phone number in it,” says Watts. “My mother said, ‘If you want to go see him, it’s your right.’”

Watts had a friend make the call for her. When a woman answered, the friend asked if Watts’ father was available to come to the phone. “The woman said, ‘No, I’m sorry. He died in February.” It was April. 

Watts was crushed. “All of a sudden, I realized that I’m never going to be able to sit across from him and ask, ‘Who are you?’”

If she couldn’t meet her father, she was determined to learn all about his family history. “So, my mom and my uncle drove me to the library in the town where he lived,” says Watts. “I pulled the microfiche of his obituary. I copied it and printed it. I took the phone books and cross-referenced the names in the obituary and made a nice little list, which I still have. I figured out who his sisters were and the names of his parents because my mom didn’t know that information.”

As she dug deeper, Watts was delighted with what she learned. “On my father’s paternal line, I’ve gone all the way back to my five-time great-grandfather, who was born sometime around 1720 and fought under Gen. George Washington,” she says. “It gave me a picture of who I am and where I came from.”

But none of it was true. In 2017 Watts took her own DNA test. “My father was not the biological child of the man who raised him,” she says. 

The experience gave Watts a unique perspective in helping others with their own unexpected family discoveries. “I tell clients if you’re willing to do the DNA, that’s great,” says Watts. “It’ll be helpful. But I need to know what you want to know. Do you want the good, bad and ugly? Or do you just want the pretty paper trail that you’ve been told all your life? And I’m OK with whichever you choose, because it’s your story.”

For those who agree to DNA testing, the results can still be difficult to accept. 

“I have people say to me, ‘My grandmother would never …,’” says Watts. “Yes, grandma would have. Because their lives were so different from ours. There were things that were done out of necessity. A woman finds herself pregnant after whatever circumstances. She doesn’t have a voice. She’s not allowed to be pregnant and single. She can’t work and support herself. So, the first thing she’s going to do is marry the first suitor who shows an interest. And that baby is going to be that man’s baby. Yes, the dates are a little off, but so she went into labor early. Or it’s just a big baby.”

She adds, “Nowhere along the line did great-great-grandma think that 100 years from now, somebody’s going to spit in a tube and find out her secret.”