No...not MY mother!
Yeah...I was an early “victim” of a DNA surprise. In 2012, I found out the man who raised me, whose name I had for 51 years, was not my dad. My dad isn’t my biological dad. What? No! Yes, it’s true. Where is all my Italian? It’s all gone! 98% Irish?!? What the hell? Well, I’ll tell you. Please gather ‘round. Do I have a story!
First, a little background on my upbringing. My dad and mom were working class – dad worked in a paper cutting factory after World War 2 and my mom was a secretary. They married in 1949 and lived in the neighborhood they grew up in in the South Bronx, had a son, then 3 years later, a daughter. Ten years later, in 1959, down the block from the factory where my dad worked in the North Bronx, there were new 2 family houses being built, so they went in with my mom’s sister and her husband and they bought the house. My aunt and uncle had no kids and lived downstairs with the dog. My family, along with my mom’s mom, lived upstairs. Dad’s parents were gone before I was born and mom’s father died in 1950. I was born in 1961. Grandma died in 1963. My aunt was the only person in my mom’s family I ever knew. I have no idea why. They didn’t live very far. The only thing I knew of them were names and Christmas cards. My dad started working at the Post Office in the late 60s. My mother was more modern than most women at that time. When my brother and sister were born, she went back to work right away. When I came along, she also went back to work right away and after my grandmother died, the Italian woman next door watched me until I started school. As a small child, I understood some Italian because the woman’s mother didn’t speak English. But then she died and I lost it. My dad and his siblings would speak Italian when they didn’t want the kids to understand what they were saying.
Kids. I use that term very loosely. My brother was 9 years older than me, my sister was 6 years older than me. We only had 5 first cousins and 5 or 6 first cousins once removed. Most of them were adults by the time I was “aware” of who people were. The oldest of the cousins had his first son when I was 3, but we only saw them every couple of years. So essentially, I grew up as an only child with no cousins my own age.
I’ve been doing genealogy as a hobby since 2000. That was when the Ellis Island records first came online. I was 39 years old and half Irish/half Italian. My dad’s parents were “off the boat” from Naples so I was pretty excited to learn more about where I came from. I never knew my Italian grandparents, but I was raised with my dad’s Italian family and if asked, I’d usually say “I’m Italian...well, half Irish” because I didn’t even know my mom’s side of the family. I considered myself Italian. I was so excited to look at all those ship manifests and I finally found my grandmother – little 10 year old Guiseppa Marotta, her 4 sisters and their mother. It was 1903. I just stared at that manifest and marveled at their bravery, a woman, my great-grandmother, the same age as me, 39 years old, with her 5 little girls, all traveling to a new country where their husband and father waited for them. Wow.
I worked on my family tree, first using a program put out by AOL, Family Tree Maker. I think that ultimately became Ancestry[dot]com. I found all sorts of things I never knew, there were census records and military records and all sorts of other information over the years and I was able to put together my family tree. I was pretty damned proud of that tree and of my brave ancestors from Naples who made a new life in this country.
Fast forward to 2012. Ancestry began offering home DNA tests, so I was all over that. I spit in the tube and waited. I finally got an email saying that my results were ready, so I eagerly logged into Ancestry and saw that not only were there names of people, there was also a breakdown of my ethnicity. I started looking at names, none of which I recognized. Then I look at the ethnicity results. Wait...why does that say I’m 98% Irish? What does that mean? Where is all my Italian? I really didn’t understand what I was looking at, so I just told myself that there mustn’t be a big database for them to draw from and once more people tested, that will change. I then pretty much went back to my research and tree work and barely thought about it. I’d look at my matches and I still didn’t see any familiar names. Once in a while, I’d get a message from a stranger wondering how we were related, but Ancestry told me it was a 3rd or 4th cousin, so I’d just respond that I didn’t know and their name wasn’t familiar and be done with it. My mom and dad were both long deceased, so I wasn’t able to ask them about any of these names.
In 2015, I got a message from a woman named Shannon. I hadn’t looked at my results in a while, so I opened the message and read that she looked at my tree and was puzzled because she couldn’t figure out how I fit in HER tree. We matched at 291 cMs (which I came to learn was a good match - 1st cousin once removed or 2nd cousin). I went to Shannon’s tree and saw nearly 3,000 strangers. I looked at our shared matches and saw more strangers. I looked at my match list and finally saw some familiar names...all from my mom’s side of the family – strangers to me, but names I recognized that did not match Shannon or any of our common matches. I also looked at my ethnicity and I still wasn’t Italian...not a single drop. I wrote back to Shannon and told her that I couldn’t figure out where I fit in her tree, but if I came across new information, I’d reach out to her.
It was at this point I started thinking that something was terribly awry. Was is possible that my mother cheated on my dad? Nah..it couldn’t possibly be. That wasn’t like her. There must be a mistake in the test. So I did what so many others in my position did – I called Ancestry to give them a piece of my mind! I got someone on the phone and I asked them about the accuracy of the test, questioned whether there could be an error. I was told that their test is 99.9% accurate. I asked them if I could get some kind of refund or credit if I took a test from another company and it turned out Ancestry was wrong. I was told they couldn’t refund my money for the test, but they could work out something with my subscription.
At this point, my wife decided she was going to do a test. She’s a mutt – German, Irish, Norwegian, French, Swedish. By mistake, she ordered 2 tests. She sent hers in and I decided to call my sister. Our brother died in 2006. I told my sister about my test results and I asked her if she would do a test for me. She was completely intrigued and said she’d test. I was telling a friend about my test and she suggested 23andMe. I’d never heard of them, but went online and ordered a test from them. In the meantime, my wife’s test results came back and it said she was...German, Irish, Norwegian, French and Swedish. About a week later, my sister’s test came back. I opened Ancestry to look at her results – 48% Irish, 46% Italian/Western Europe. More importantly, our cMs were 2,001 – she is my half-sister. Shortly after that, I got my 23andMe results back, which gave me 99% Irish and another crowd of strangers who were related to me.
Once the shock of everything wore off, I basically figured this was a mystery I would never solve because there was literally no one alive who could answer any questions for me – the proverbial needle in a haystack. How was I ever going to figure out who my mom might have had a sexual relationship with in 1960? I mean, it was laughable – she and my dad both worked and she had 2 little kids at home. While I’d tell my story to people, I really had no hope of ever solving this puzzle. I kind of just went on with my life and would go back to Ancestry once in a blue hoping that I’d get a sibling or 1st cousin match.
In September 2017, I got a 1st cousin match on Ancestry. I couldn’t believe it! I finally might get some answers. The match’s name is Ed. I immediately sent a message to Ed and basically said I got some unusual results on my DNA test and I asked him if his mother had any brothers. Ed responded right away – why yes, said Ed, my mother had 2 brothers. They were both priests!
No way. Even though I was raised Catholic, my mom NEVER went to church...when was she going to be able to have a social relationship with a priest with working full time and 2 little kids at home? Ed told me he had a tree, but that his sister knew more than he did and he’d ask her to get me names, dates and relationships. I went and looked at Ed’s tree – I saw the 2 priests there, one born in 1900 and the other born in 1910. My mom was born in 1928, so this was quite an age difference, but who knows. Then I saw some other names that looked familiar. And I suddenly remembered that woman Shannon from 2015 and wasn’t that HER last name I saw on Ed’s tree? I went back to Shannon’s tree and there was some of Ed’s people there! Could this be the key? By now, I had names from Ed’s sister that I could see were in Shannon’s tree, so I asked Ed if he knew Shannon. He said “yes, I do, we’re 2nd cousins.” OMG!
Now that I had a breakthrough, I was able to figure out that Ed and Shannon weren’t actually blood related. But for MY purposes, this was perfect. Ed’s mother’s sister, Aileen, was married to Shannon’s father’s brother, Jack. Jack and Aileen were my grandparents. Jack and Aileen had 3 sons and 2 daughters, so one of these sons was my birth father. I just had to figure out which one, but for the most part, my mystery was solved. Two of the three brothers were dead; both sisters were still alive. Ed and I had many emails back and forth and he told me that he and his wife spent winters in Florida, where the oldest of Jack and Aileen’s children lived with her daughter – my aunt, Jackie, and my cousin, Keira. Ed said that while he and his wife were in Florida, they’d visit several times with Jackie and Keira and he would try to gently bring me up. He wasn’t able to bring it up with Jackie, but be took Keira aside and told her the whole story. He gave Keira my email and we started corresponding and eventually speaking on the phone. This was in early 2018 and on Easter of that year, Ed and his wife went to Jackie and Keira’s for dinner and one of Keira’s cousins, Emma, was there, a daughter of one of the 3 brothers. I had given Ed a lot of information about my mom – where she worked at the time I was conceived, that she was on a bowling league, some other stuff. So when the cousin was there, they all started chatting about the old days. Ed’s wife brought up Emma’s dad and said “oh, didn’t he work at IBM?” Emma said “no, he worked at Sinclair & Valentine.” Ed and his wife told me later it was all they could do to not explode because they knew that my mom worked at Sinclair & Valentine!
So, my needle in a haystack was solved. All of this stuff dropped into my lap in a matter of a few days. Since that fateful Easter, I have met and become very close with Keira and Aunt Jackie as well as Shannon and her sister, and Ed and his wife. I’m in touch with a couple of other cousins too but we’ve yet to meet. I have 6 siblings from my birth father, Gene, including Emma. Unfortunately, my new siblings haven’t been willing to speak to me except one brother, but it’s usually me who initiates contact. I don’t want to push them and I know that some of the reluctance on their part is that their mother is still alive. Of my birth father’s 7 kids, I am smack in the middle and could be considered an Irish Triplet – one brother is 9 months older than me and one brother is 10 months younger than me. My aunt thinks that once their mother is gone, they’ll be more willing to have contact. At this point, I’m thrilled with my new relationships and figure if my siblings don’t want to get to know me, it’s their loss.
So that’s my story. If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with it. Trust me when I tell you that when I tell it in person, it’s a lot longer – I got my rambling storytelling ability from my father, along with his quiet love of reading, his cheeks and his freckles. I just wish I would have been able to meet him.
When I met Aunt Jackie last year, the first thing she said to me was “You look just like my brother.”
Special thanks to Annie P for her sharing her story.
