A Search for Ethnicity that Led to Exciting DNA Discoveries!
By Lisa Beshears
I grew up never knowing or meeting my father. My mother, who had been adopted at birth, died when I was eight years old. After her death, my half-sister and I moved in with my mother’s adoptive parents. As a child I spent a lot of time wondering about my ethnicity. My grandparents had no helpful information – they would just say I was “American”.
In June 2014, I saw a commercial for Ancestry DNA and decided to find out what my ethnicity was, but I was not expecting anything else.
When my results arrived, I was thrilled to find out I was 56% NW European, 32% Ireland/Scotland, and the rest small amounts of Nordic and Native American. I was also very surprised when I found out I had over 300 fourth cousin or closer DNA matches. I decided to start a small family tree at Ancestry.
One of my matches had a predicted relationship of first cousin. She used a screen name instead of her real name on her account and I sent her messages, but she did not reply. I decided to contact some other cousin matches and was able to find information on my mother’s birth mother and her family through one of those matches. My birth grandmother had died in 1992, but I was excited to learn that I had a great aunt who lived to be 100 and another one who is still alive at 95!
I could not go any further on my mother’s side, so I went back to the puzzle of my unknown first cousin, thinking she must be on my father’s side, and started reaching out to more matches. I decided to look at and email the shared matches to my first cousin match, and in September 2015, I got a reply from Patti Huff Smith. She said she would help me any way she could.
We communicated through phone calls and emails as we searched. Patti did a Google search on my first cousin match’s screen name and found her real name. Then she found four women with that name on Facebook. I went to their Facebook pages and when I saw that one of them was from Sacramento, I thought it made sense because I was born in that area, too. I looked at the photos on her Facebook page and noticed one of her when she was in the Navy. It looked a lot like a photo of me when I was in the Air Force. I knew it had to be her. Again, I sent her a message and did not hear back from her. Later I learned that she had not been on Facebook or Ancestry for a few months.
I knew two pieces of information about my father: his name was Gene Bennett and he met my mother in a small coastal town in Oregon. Since I could see my first cousin’s friends’ list on her page, I sent friend requests to every person on her list with the last name of Bennett.
My friend request was accepted by only one person. He was my uncle Ed, my father’s older brother. He replied to my message, telling me my dad’s middle name was Eugene, but he was known as Gene. He said that they had lived in a town about ten miles from where my mother lived when she got pregnant with me.
We started to converse through Facebook messages, and I found out that my first cousin match was a niece of both my uncle Ed and my father through their sister. Then, I found out I had seven more aunts, and twenty-one cousins. I was so happy with this news! And the most exciting discovery of all – my uncle told me that my father was still alive in Oregon!
My uncle contacted one of my aunts who was in touch with my father to find out if he wanted to meet me. He did, so in December 2015, I flew to Oregon and at age 55, I met my father, half-sisters, nieces, and nephews for the very first time. It was amazing! I enjoyed every minute of it and I finally discovered who I looked like. I have the same hair and eye color as my father and I also share his dimple on my left cheek.
Sadly, my father had been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer and was given six months to live a few months before I met him. I was able to visit him one more time in May, before he died in July 2016. As sad as I was to lose him, if I had not found him when I did, I would have never have gotten the chance to meet him.
I will always be grateful for Patti’s help and the time and effort she put into helping a cousin she barely knew, wading through the DNA results to find my family. I am still in contact with my new family members. I never in my wildest dreams thought researching my DNA could lead to anything like this, but sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
It is important to be considerate about publishing personal information for living people obtained from any genealogical research. Lisa has approved publication of this story.
