As not everyone understands DNA, I'll cover some quick basics.
First we all get 50% of our DNA from our father and 50% of our DNA from our mother. That is a basic building block of our DNA, it never changes. DNA comes down to us in clumps, you are mix of your ancestors, but you may have more of one ancestral line over another family line in your DNA. Not even siblings will share the exact same amounts of DNA mix. Each of child will get a different amount of their ancestors DNA, depending on what your parents passed on to you the day they created you (or a nice way of saying had sex).
Here's an example,
You can see this father and mother received more or less of each of their parents DNA, but each got 50% from the father and 50% from their mother. The child has more or less amounts of different colors or amounts of DNA of their grandparents. That child will then pass on a various combination to their child.
Another child with the same parents may have gotten more of Grandfather purple and Grandmother yellow. But again each child got 50% of their DNA from their mother and father, but the mix of what they receive will have a little more of one ancestor and a little less of another.
The other big term to know is Centimorgans or often shown as "cMs" The easiest way to explain cMs is that it is a measurement of DNA. The more cMs you share with another person, the more closely related you are. For example, as I stated, you get 50% of your DNA from your parents, so no one else will share as much DNA with you as your parents or your children (who get 50% of your DNA). Then your siblings as they share the same parents, so they are next closest match. But from there DNA spreads out. The next group you share the most DNA will be grandchildren, grandparents, uncles and aunts. Then the circle of shared your DNA will spread out to 1st cousins, great-grandparents, etc. This chart may help you as I will use it this again in this discussion.
If you put your name in the chart under self, it will show you the amounts or ranges of DNA you should share with each of your relatives.
So back my family, we began doing DNA testing with my family in 2015. We all came back sharing the correct amount of DNA for my mother to be my mother to me and my brothers and grandmother to her grandchildren. My brothers and myself also came back correctly to be brothers, even though we all came back with different ethnicity results. (Remember Ethnicity is not 100% accurate no matter what DNA company you use at this time).
Then in 2016, my cousin Dru and my Mom's sister B did DNA tests. If you look at the above chart, the range of cMs or centimorgans a sibling should share with you is between 2209-3384. My mom and her sister shared only 1617 cMs of DNA. Way below what full siblings should share. Using the chart you can see what range they came back as sharing.
We knew we could eliminate my Mom's sister being her grandparent, grandchild, aunt, and niece. That only left the fact they were half sisters. My aunt's daughter Dru also came back as a half niece to my mother and my half 1st cousin. Dru matched her mother correctly as her mother, so we knew that with my family and my aunt and daughter matching us as half, something was wrong with our ancestry. Sharing half meant they shared only one parent in common. Someone had a different mother or father! There were other family members who had done DNA testing. Both my mother and her sister shared a first cousin on their mother's side of the family correctly and a 2nd cousin on their mother's side also came back as a match to both. So we knew my Mom and her sister must share the same mother, but one of them had a different father, but which sister? You can imagine it was a shock to all of us to make this discovery.
So we reached out to my Mom's nephew, Chet who agreed to do a DNA test. He came back as a half nephew to my mother and a full nephew to my aunt. He was a half 1st cousin to my brothers and myself, but a full 1st cousin to my cousin Dru. This proved his mother and my aunt B both shared the same parents and my Mom was the sister who had a different father.
There was no record my mother had a different father. So many people asked my mother what did her birth certificate say, it said her father was father and her mother was her mother. There were no rumors of my grandmother ever being involved with anyone other than the man we knew as my grandfather. Walter Buzzell.
We spent the next year trying to figure out what may have happened. Ancestry DNA kept matching my family to people who did not match my aunt or cousins, so we knew they must be people who match on her biological father's side. One common theme kept appearing with my Mom's DNA matches. The matches all seem to have had at least one ancestor who was a Strout from Charleston, Maine where my mother was born. We began to realize that someone on her father's side was a Strout ancestor. But the matches were distant 3rd and 4th cousins, so the Strout match could be through my Mom's biological grandfather or biological grandmother's side.
As we talked to family members and researched my mother's birth. We knew my grandmother did not drive and was limited geographical on how far she could travel on foot. We knew my grandfather was often gone for long periods of time when he worked in the woods during the time they lived in Charleston, Maine and left my grandmother at home alone with 5 children. My grandmother never left the neighborhood which she living in Charleston called "Puddledock," but relied on neighbors for help or to visit.
The 1940 census taken just 3 years before let's say before my mother's conception revealed two men who were brothers and neighbors to my grandmother whose names were Perley Strout and Harold Strout. Keep in mind we were finding the common theme in matches to my Mom were people with Strout ancestry. Other neighbors to my grandparents were Trims who did not have Strout ancestry or they were relatives to my grandfather Buzzell's family which we now knew were not my direct ancestors.
My aunt remembered both Strout families as Perley's family was the next closest neighbor and Harold Strout had daughters who were the same age as two of my aunts. Both were known to have visited my grandmother and sometimes alone as they would my grandmother with heavy lifting, wood for the wood stove, etc. We began to consider that my Mom may just not have a Strout ancestor, but really may be a Strout. We spent the next several months trying to contact descendants of the Charleston Strouts whose DNA could help us determine which Strout man may be my mother's real father. We were met with it was a nice story and wished us luck, but no thanks or got no response at all. At times, it was discouraging.
In 2017, a DNA match came back to a Chris R. He shared 322 cMs with my mother. Corresponding with his wife, we learned Chris' great-grandfather was Harold Strout. But Chris' DNA wasn't enough to prove Harold was my mother's uncle or father. Here is the chart for his range of DNA.
Based on his ancestry we knew we could eliminate some of the groups and he would be either my Mom's 1st cousin, twice removed if Perley Strout was my Mom's father or he could be my Mom's half-great-nephew if Harold Strout was her father. We needed someone else in Chris' family to do a DNA test to help. His grandmother would be the closest match to mother as either her half-sister or her first cousin. Sadly, her health would not allow us to use her DNA, but Chris' mother, Terry was the next closest match and she agreed to do the DNA test.
Terry came back sharing 757 cMs of DNA. She shared too much DNA on average to be my Mom's 1st cousin once removed if Perley Strout was my mother's father.
Compared to my mother's other half-niece and nephew, Terry was right in the middle.
Mom's half niece, Dru shared 812 cMs with my mother
Terry shared 757 cMs with my mother
Mom's half nephew Chet shared 727 cMs with mother
Terry's test was enough with Chris's test to prove Mom's ancestry. Harold Strout was my Mom's father. Recently more of my mother's new Strout relatives have done DNA testing and all fall correctly into the range as expected to be my Mom's cousins. No other Strout descendant to date shares as much DNA as Terry with my Mom.
In November 2017, we all agreed to meet.
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| Terry, Mom, Chris and myself |
As difficult as it was for Mom to learn all this at age 73, that her father was a neighbor, and that she had three more half sisters that she never got to know and many more half nieces and nephews. It has been a positive experience meeting her new family and actually made my mother feel better about it all.
For me, as a genealogist, it was hard to think of the years spent tracing a family line that wasn't really all mine, but to look at it as a gift of exploring a whole new family tree. I had forgotten the excitement when I was young of finding a new ancestor and making new family connections. Now it has all come back.
We know we have been lucky to solve this mystery in a relative short period of time compared to others in the same situation. We are thankful we had someone who really only did a DNA test for his ethnicity and not to find all new relatives, who was so willing to help us prove we are related to him and accept us too. I don't believe this will be everyone's experience doing a DNA tests as so far on my father's side of the family we match everyone we should correctly. But more and more I hear stories of people finding these surprises or finding their real biological family if they were adopted. It is claimed that within the next 10 years, DNA testing will solve all mysteries as the numbers of people doing tests is growing world wide. As of 2018, there 14 million people in all the various DNA testing sites and it just keeps growing.
So as we have learned, Do Not Assume (DNA).
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