DNA Testing & Rebuilding Trees

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In 2019 I decided to take a DNA test to try to find my mother's birth parent's. She was adopted as a baby from the Mount Vernon Children's Home in Illinois in 1926. The only clue I has was that her birth mother's name was maybe Lois Winnings. Growing up I knew my mom's adoptive father (her mother died when i was about 4 yrs old), as my Papaw. It was not until I was in my 30's that my mom revealed at a family dinner that she had been adopted. She was really upset about the whole thing. She did indicate that her and dad did hire a private eye to try to find her bio parent's but other than the possible name that was all they were able to discover. At the time they tried to search, her father -Aubrey Giles was very against her search and as a former Mayor of the small town of Eldorado Illinois, may have had the means to keep some of the information buried. Fast forward to 2019, my folks had both passed a few years ago. As a result of doing the DNA test I was able to discover that my mom's bio mom was indeed Lois Lorene Wining b. 1902. That discovery came fairly quickly as a result of testing on 23andMe. I matched to a half first cousin - Jamie Huckstead, who shared Lois Winings as a grandmother. I was able to exchange information with her and as able to do further research on Lois. As a result I was able to confirm that was mom’s bio mom. Finding mom's bio dad was much harder. I started doing what is known as the Leed's method (sorting DNA matches into groups of shared matches - with the intent of isolating matches via the 4 grandparent's - maternal/maternal, maternal/paternal, paternal/maternal, paternal/paternal.) Matches to my maternal/maternal were easy to identify since they matched to my newfound 1/2 cousin. Using tools such as dnapainter.com's WATA and shared cM tool. I was also able to build out trees and created a couple of trees where I was able to link several of my matches to each other, but other than the ones that linked back through Lois, I couldn’t figure out how they linked back to me or if any linked to mom’s mystery bio dad. I ended up with what seemed to be about 4-5 other groups. But was also having trouble identifying any as coming from my dad's side. I did have 2 close matches that matched much higher than my new 1/2 cousin on my mom's mom's side. The cM's were too high to be 1/2 cousins, and they were half siblings that shared a mother. So, somehow I linked to them through their mother. So that really didn’t make a lot of sense. Next I tested with Ancestry DNA. As a result I found many more close matches. I set about continuing to sort out the matches. In doing so and using tools from dnapainter, I was able to determine how a match to a Gary Lawrence connected to me, he turned out to be my mom's half brother, I was able to find that my mom's bio dad was William Lawrence. I also had several other matches that fit with both my mom's mom side and my mom's dad side. But I still couldn't fit the two half siblings I'd found on 23andMe, or a couple more possible 1st cousins on Ancestry and so many more matches. I had been able to link most of these unknown matches to each other, but couldn’t sort out how they fit into my tree as it had been built. So now what? Note, I had done a lot of this work, but prior to confirming how the Lawrence’s connected I did request help of a search angel from a facebook group called DNA Detectives. She was able to help confirm what I basically already knew. A) that likely my dad wasn’t my bio dad. At that point I wasn’t ready to face that, and my search angel was kind enough to leave that alone and to help me with my actual request - in trying to discover who was my mom’s dad. She was able to help me confirm my work with the dnapainter WATA tool, and research to identify that Gary Lawrence was my half uncle. But working with her did help me recognize what I was putting off facing - basically that my dad wasn’t my bio dad, and that I really did know how all these unknown cousins on this cousin tree really did connect. As the saying goes, DNA doesn’t lie. There really was only one way all these people connected back to me based on the numbers of cMs. Using tools such as dnapainter.com's WATA and shared cM tool, I was able to determine I am a NPE (not parent expected/Non parental event) - basically I discovered my dad was not my bio dad. That was a big shock. I found out who my bio father is, and found that the two half siblings I couldn't place either are actually the son and daughter of what would have been my 1/2 sister. The 1/2 sister has passed. Now that tree I’d built with all these matches that linked to each other, I was able to link to me. So I found that all the relatives I grew up visiting at holidays, such as family xmas dinners, Thanksgiving dinners, etc none of them were really blood relatives. Since we never knew mom’s blood relatives, that was two lines - Winings and Lawrence that were new to me. On dad’s side, I grew up thinking my grandparent’s were Nora Lee Martin and Henry Smith. Now, I had to give up Martin and Smith, and now I have Harvey and Blose. My dad will always be my dad. I will never give up my memories or how he raised me and was my daughter’s papa. I refer to my bio dad as a sperm donor. How it all happened I have no real idea. I have built out my Winings Lawrence Harvey Blose DNA tree, in the interest of tracing out the DNA. My personal tree is the Stacy Smith family tree, which lists my dad as my preferred dad. I still find genealogy interesting, tracing out DNA puzzles is interesting. I continue to try to see how I connect to the many matches that continue to pop up as matches on 23andMe or Ancestry. I’m also happy to try to help others solve their own mysteries.

GEDCOM Source

@R1303777305@ U.S., Obituary Collection, 1930-Current Ancestry.com Ancestry.com Operations Inc 1,7545::0

GEDCOM Source

Publication Date: 22/ Oct/ 2012; Publication Place: Murray, Kentucky, USA; URL: http://murrayledger.com/obituaries/ 1,7545::221193681