In 2009 we jumped on the DNA train. 23andMe offered a genetic testing service directly to consumers that provided reports on predispositions to various health conditions as well as ancestry information. It seemed like a long shot, but it had been five years since we reached a dead end with the adoption agency, St. Patrick’s Guild, so we thought, why not?
We did receive some interesting health information, but bottom line 2009 was just too early. Their data base was still relatively small; Tim’s DNA matched with relatives too distant to really help in the search for his birth families. Years went by and while he accumulated lots of matches on 23andMe, they were never close enough to provide actionable clues.
I won’t pretend I understood very much about DNA matching in those early years. Sure, I had the basic concepts: X and Y chromosomes, 23 pairs – 46 in total, half your DNA from mom, half from dad. But there were so many new terms and concepts to learn in order to decipher the reports and determine family connections that at times it all seemed overwhelming. My advice to anyone that goes down this path is to dig in, take the tutorials and learn as much as you can, otherwise you’ll drown in data and follow too many false leads.
In early 2018, nine years after joining 23andMe, Tim was notified of a significant match – a second cousin. We finally had a real clue! It meant Tim and this cousin (a female) likely shared the same great-grandparents. Step one would be to determine if the match was maternal or paternal. Tim immediately sent her a message but got no response. A week later he sent a second message, but again no response. Sadly, around this same time, our daughter, Stephanie, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Needless to say, our lives were derailed and Tim’s focus on his roots was quickly put on the back burner.
Nine months later, our hearts still raw from losing Stephanie, we once again picked up the search. I needed something to consume me other than heartache and my cousin inspired me to join her on Ancestry.com to work on our family trees. I remember thinking this could be good for the whole family – Tim, our son, Chris, and his wife, Shelly – as we all needed to find our way through the grief that was defining us. In October 2018, Tim and I prayed for the best as we mailed off our ancestry DNA test kits and started building our family tree. I was filled with hope that it would be different this time: after all, we had an angel on the team now.
When Tim received his DNA matches in November, we couldn’t believe it. There was a second cousin match and unlike our experience with the earlier match on 23andMe, this cousin contacted him immediately. He was now living in Finland but was originally from Ireland, and he was a godsend. In addition to being the first close blood relative Tim connected with after over fifteen years of searching, he was also a genealogy hobbyist. Tim shared all the information we had about his beginnings and his new cousin from Finland advised us to load Tim’s raw DNA into several other services – FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage and Gedmatch. He knew by comparing to the relatives in those databases, we would learn a lot about where Tim fit into the family. We did that immediately, and within a week Tim had several additional close cousin matches.
From these matches we were able to determine the names of one set of Tim’s biological great-grandparents: Hazlett Hastings / Rebecca McCausland of Co. Donegal, Ireland. Everyone suspected it was a paternal match because none of them recognized the surname Rogers. We couldn’t quite believe our luck; identifying Tim’s father without cooperation from his mother had always seemed hopeless.
One interesting revelation was that his paternal birth family was Protestant. That possibility had never even occurred to us, primarily because the biographical information we had discovered in Tim’s documents said his father was Roman Catholic. But his new cousins were quite emphatic that there were no Catholics in the family. Stepping back, we weren’t totally surprised. If your target market for these babies was Irish Catholic Americans, a Protestant heritage wasn’t much of a selling feature. From that point forward, we viewed that biographical information with a healthy dose of skepticism. We considered it more of a sales brochure and decided to only put our trust in what we could prove through DNA.
On a positive note, this is a good time to mention how welcoming all these new relatives were. It was heartwarming how delighted they were to have Tim as part of the family. This felt completely different than our previous attempt at connecting with Tim’s birth mother in 2004. This time the doors weren’t closing in our face. Quite the opposite, they were wide open, and Tim had been invited in.
DNA matches had gotten us closer than we ever dreamt possible, but this was a big family and we still had substantial work ahead to figure out who Tim’s father was. The difference was we weren’t alone anymore; the Murray family was now joined by members of the Hastings/McCausland family to solve this mystery. On both sides of the pond, countless hours were spent scouring government documents, genealogy databases, social media and online gravesite records. Our newly discovered cousins began talking to older family members, hoping someone remembered the family secret that was now 65 years old. An extended family member even began to help us with the identification of Tim’s maternal family. Literally with the time differences, our newly expanded team was working around the clock.
Unbelievably, about this same time, the second cousin that had matched with Tim on 23andMe earlier in 2018, finally responded to his messages. Out of the blue we learned that this Irish cousin had lived in Nashville, TN for the last twenty years! She had been less than three hours away from us all this time. They quickly confirmed their maternal connection – Tim’s mother was her aunt – her mother’s younger sister. There was a slight difference in the spelling of their surname from what was on Tim’s birth certificate – Rodgers with a “d” was the correct spelling. We’ve discovered in this world of genealogy that minor spelling errors on documents are quite common. It now seemed they were first cousins, not second, as 23andMe had reported. Another lesson has been that the algorithms are close, but not yet perfect when it comes to the projection of the familial relationship. As we’ve progressed in our search, we’ve found several such variations.
We were able to confirm that Tim’s birth mother’s family was from the same area in Co. Donegal as the Hastings/McCausland family. We could also now verify the names of Tim’s maternal grandparents: Charles Rodgers and Jane McDaid. His cousin shared that Tim’s mother was still alive but had not lived in Ireland for a very long time. She had married an Irishman and in the late 1960s they moved their young family to Australia. Her husband passed in 2017. Obviously sad for her, their five children and their numerous offspring, but we couldn’t help but hope this might change how she felt about finally connecting with Tim.
Needless to say we were overwhelmed. We had gone years knowing virtually nothing about Tim’s first family and now in a matter of weeks we knew where he was from and had a substantial start on his family tree. DNA didn’t work immediately, but it delivered ultimately…and its greatest gift was yet to come.
I am sitting on the edge of my seat!!! So exciting!!
I cannot wait for the next chapter.