Adventures in DNA genealogy

I found a long-lost cousin and solved a family mystery. How cool is that?

First the family mystery.

One of the skeletons in my family’s closet concerns an aunt, one of my mother’s four sisters. According to the family whispers, she became pregnant while attending what was then Central State Teachers College in Edmond, Okla. She supposedly went to stay with an aunt and uncle until the baby was born, at which time the doctor who delivered the child listed the aunt and uncle on the birth certificate. My mother’s sister then returned home, where her parents (my grandparents) had arranged a marriage with a local farmer.

Little was said of of this indiscretion, and to my knowledge, neither my aunt nor my grandparents ever disclosed the identity and whereabouts of this child.

Fast forward a generation. Kathy and I took autosomnal DNA tests from both Ancestry.com and 23andMe in the past year, and we are still fairly clueless about using DNA data in our research. But in my initial explorations on the 23andMe website, I noticed a close genetic relative — first or second cousin — whose surname was nowhere in my family tree. By searching genetic matches I share with this cousin, I was able to determine that our kinship was on my mother’s side of the family. But again, his surname did not exist among the 9,000-plus names in our family tree.

My newly discovered cousin and I emailed back and forth for a while, exchanging contact information. Then we spoke a couple times on the phone. It turns out he was not raised by his birth parents, but he had been told as a boy the name of his biological father. At last, a familiar name. But it still was too far removed to account for such a close genetic match.

Until I considered the mystery of my aunt’s unplanned pregnancy.

My mother and her siblings had an aunt and uncle in Texas who had one child. This child married and had a son by the same name — a name cited by my genetic cousin as his biological father. The mystery baby had been found, and my long-lost cousin was that baby’s son.

My new cousin and I have excitedly shared our discovery with our family members. I have emailed him photos of his grandmother (my aunt) and we have vowed to get together later this year when we visit friends in South Texas. What an exciting way to launch our journey into genetic genealogy.

— Tom Tuell