A Long Time Ago, in a Childhood Far, Far Away

My parents adopted P before he was born, after it became clear they couldn’t have children of their own. They brought him home in 1971, and my Ma promptly became pregnant with me. I like to freak people out when I tell them my brother and I are only 11 months apart in age (some of our more prolific breeders here in Glibland probably don’t think this is a big deal).

My immigrant patriarch

We were like any typical family in that we had many stories of family legend – the guy that “saved the Duke of Wellington’s life”; the planned horse farm that never happened because “all the horses died on the voyage from the Old Country”; my great-grandfather that “killed a man in a bar brawl”; the Sheriff in the Ozarks that chased after the Baldknobbers (if there’s interest, I’ll write about these stories later).

We even had some stories from my brother’s family – that he had a brother that was either a twin or an older brother. When Timothy McVeigh was arrested, my Ma and I said “do you think…?” because McVeigh looked so much like P. Thankfully, P is totally unrelated to McVeigh.

When I arrived in DC in 1990, I took immediate advantage of the easy access to the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Then along came the internet. I made myself into an expert family researcher, and helped a couple friends find out about their own families. A few years ago, I helped a friend of a friend find his long-lost siblings. Perhaps the universe was preparing me for what was to come…

My Brother’s Genealogy Keeper

P never expressed any desire to find his genetic family. He was fine with what he had and how he was raised. He did want to know where his neurofibromatosis (NF) came from, but it was never that big a deal. It obviously came from someone, and it was just a point of mild curiosity for him.

Then, in late 2018, I was shocked to find out P had taken the Ancestry DNA test. We talked extensively about whether he was prepared for the results. He was. He would take whatever information he could. So he turned over control of his Ancestry account to me, and the ball started to roll, very quickly.

The first results to come up for P were more distant (2nd -3rd cousins). Doing the math of genetic genealogy, a 2nd cousin shares a set of common great-grandparent with P. That comes out to 8 individuals. But which ones? There are a lot of combinations and possibilities when dealing with that much information. I had no idea whether these matches were on P’s mother’s or father’s side of the family. I contacted a few of the closer matches, but nobody knew anything.

Then a 1st cousin match appeared. I corresponded with the person for a bit, but it was clear that the person’s extended family was scattered and he didn’t even know the names of all his aunts & uncles. I researched the few names he was able to provide and still came up empty. But I was zeroing in. I had the names of one set of P’s grandparents, but I still didn’t know if these were maternal or paternal.

Enter Bob & Jim. These guys were distantly related to P, but they were also expert genetic genealogists. They taught me about centimorgans and how to interpret DNA data. We had several conference calls to puzzle out the data I was seeing.

I entered P’s information into GedMatch (something I wouldn’t recommend unless you need to do some serious genetic genealogy) and was able to use what I learned from Bob & Jim to finally separate P’s mother’s and father’s families. The set of grandparents I had identified earlier were clearly maternal. I also was able to take the names from P’s matches and identify his paternal grandparents and narrow down possible fathers to two men who were born around the time indicated in P’s “adoption lore”.

Long Lost Family

Then it happened. I was on my ski vacation and logged into P’s Ancestry account. Another first cousin. I contacted them and the floodgates opened. They provided P’s mother’s name and said P had a brother that had been looking for him for years. They also knew P’s father’s name, which proved my genetic genealogical calculations were right on the money.

Oddly, these cousins never informed P’s brother that they found him. That came a few weeks later when T’s (the brother) own DNA results were posted to Ancestry.

Here are the messages we exchanged:

T: Hi there. According to Ancestry we’re closely related somehow. Would like to know exactly how as I’ve not heard your name before and didn’t find you on a family tree project a relative of mine had started.


ME: I am P’s sister. He asked me to manage his Ancestry account for him.

Soooo…where to begin? P was adopted pretty much at birth by our parents. I was born about a year later: our parents are my biological parents.

Based on my research and now confirmed with your DNA results, I did determine that P’s biological mother was your mother.

I know this is probably a little bit of a shock. I know both P and I are excited to find out about his birth family.


T: You have no idea how much this means to me. I have been looking for P for 30 plus years and this has been one of the best days of my life. I can not express in words what this means to me to find you both. Do either of you watch the show Long Lost Family on TLC? I would always watch and wonder if you were watching too. I can’t believe this has finally happened.

T lives in Florida with his husband, not too far from all of us on the East Coast.

In September, 2019, all my years of genealogical research culminated in one of the best days of my life. Nothing could top this for sheer joy. I gained two brothers and our very small family expanded just a little bit.

First meeting at the airport

Family outing

Postscript: the NF came from P’s mother. She died in 2012, just one year before our mother died.