Tweet
Hello everyone, my name is Joan and I was adopted almost 60 years ago in Liverpool, England. I can always remember knowing I was adopted so I must have been told at an early age but it came as a shock to find out so much later in life that I was actually adopted into my maternal family and that my birth mother was my adopted mother's niece, the people I thought of as my grandparents were actually my great grandparents and so on.
It didn't take me long to work out that most of what I had been told was untrue, which is perplexing but I can live with it and in any case, there's no-one around to ask now. There are definite advantages to knowing, I have found my half siblings and met two of them and I now know more about my maternal family than anyone else ever seemed to, having uncovered some huge skeletons along the way.
My birth mum is sadly dead and it appears that while my half siblings always knew of my existence, our mother never spoke of the circumstances of my birth or of my father. At my age, I don't have illusions of finding him and having a big happy family reunion but I do want to know who I am and where I come from. Last year having built quite a substantial maternal family tree, I had my DNA tested on Ancestry.
I don't have any close matches, the nearest being estimated 4th cousins. I can recognise a few people as belonging to my mother's side of the tree but have no idea how the others fit in. I uploaded to GEDmatch too and again the closest relationship was 4.3 generations and now FtDNA are accepting new Ancestry DNA kits, I have uploaded here too and my closest match is an estimated 2nd - 4th cousin with a total of 70cM with the longest block of 44cM.
My Ancestry ethnicity shows me as being 70% Irish, 16% GB and 9% Scandinavian but my maternal family is exclusively English and Welsh, almost all of my DNA matches show Irish family links.
I've had a go at looking at lots of matches and trying to find common names but I feel like I've got 20 large jigsaws mixed up in one box without a clue or a picture to start. Please can someone give me some guidance on an effective plan of action?
Thanks very much for anyone help or advice you can offer
It didn't take me long to work out that most of what I had been told was untrue, which is perplexing but I can live with it and in any case, there's no-one around to ask now. There are definite advantages to knowing, I have found my half siblings and met two of them and I now know more about my maternal family than anyone else ever seemed to, having uncovered some huge skeletons along the way.
My birth mum is sadly dead and it appears that while my half siblings always knew of my existence, our mother never spoke of the circumstances of my birth or of my father. At my age, I don't have illusions of finding him and having a big happy family reunion but I do want to know who I am and where I come from. Last year having built quite a substantial maternal family tree, I had my DNA tested on Ancestry.
I don't have any close matches, the nearest being estimated 4th cousins. I can recognise a few people as belonging to my mother's side of the tree but have no idea how the others fit in. I uploaded to GEDmatch too and again the closest relationship was 4.3 generations and now FtDNA are accepting new Ancestry DNA kits, I have uploaded here too and my closest match is an estimated 2nd - 4th cousin with a total of 70cM with the longest block of 44cM.
My Ancestry ethnicity shows me as being 70% Irish, 16% GB and 9% Scandinavian but my maternal family is exclusively English and Welsh, almost all of my DNA matches show Irish family links.
I've had a go at looking at lots of matches and trying to find common names but I feel like I've got 20 large jigsaws mixed up in one box without a clue or a picture to start. Please can someone give me some guidance on an effective plan of action?
Thanks very much for anyone help or advice you can offer
and people with Jewish ancestry. I have many of them among my matches, too, but have no known Jewish ancestors.
Comment