The Joy is in the Creating
Imagine for a moment you’re going through the mail on some random Thursday and stuck between the Bed Bath & Beyond coupon and your electric bill you find an envelope postmarked from another country. What’s your first thought? Well, it’s probably not, “Oh, that must be a letter from some guy that thinks he’s my brother.”
My point is, nobody is prepared to open the letter we sent. Continue reading “Everyone Should Know Their Story – Part 6: The Homecoming”
New revelations about Tim’s first family were popping up regularly until all of a sudden toward the end of November 2018 our progress stalled. What we knew for sure was that Tim’s paternal great-grandparents, Hazlett Hastings and Rebecca McCausland, had seven children; the age difference between the oldest (born in 1891) and youngest (born in 1909) was nearly a generation. Tim had documented cousin matches with offspring of three of the younger siblings and a fourth sister never had children. Logic would say that we could eliminate those four, so Tim’s grandmother or grandfather was likely one of the three older Hastings/ McCausland siblings – Mary Jane, Robert or William. Unfortunately, these three branches of the family tree were not as well known to the cousins Tim was working with.
Luckily, about that same time we became aware of further DNA testing that offered promise. I’ll spare you the genetics lesson, but unlike autosomal DNA which had gotten us this far, Y-DNA testing could actually identify Tim’s paternal surname. Continue reading “Everyone Should Know Their Story – Part 5: And His Name Is . . .”
There is no version of being an unwed and pregnant teenage girl that is enviable. Then envision her family turning her over to the Catholic Church where the nuns piled on the Catholic guilt and shame that permeated Ireland in the 1950s, all the while pressuring her to give up her newborn for adoption. In most cases, these “mother and baby” homes, which were operated by the Catholic Church, received a stipend from the government to cover the cost of care for both mother and child. But that didn’t stop the nuns from also requiring restitution from each girl. If her family was unable to pay, she was usually forced to stay after she gave birth to work off her debt. This “double dipping” was only part of the profit story, the real money came from the “donations” wealthy Americans paid to adopt these coveted Irish Catholic babies. For years these adoptions were quite profitable for the Catholic Church; but even worse, by today’s standards the treatment of these young mothers and their babies was often criminal. Continue reading “Everyone Should Know Their Story – Part 4: The Dark Side of Irish Adoptions in the 1950s”
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. Continue reading “Everyone Should Know Their Story – Part 3: DNA was a Game Changer”
Tim would tell you he went most of his life without giving much thought to his biological parents. In large part, that could have been because his life with the family that adopted him was pretty darn good. It wasn’t until after his mother died in 2002 (his father had passed years before) and we found an envelope with his birth and adoption documents that I first saw genuine curiosity.
Weeks later we spread all the documents out on the kitchen table and studied the information. There were inconsistencies between them, including several variations of his birth name. On most birth documents he was Robert John Rogers. But the adoption documents called him Robert Lawrence. Continue reading “Everyone Should Know Their Story – Part 2: Decision to Search”
Most of us don’t have to wonder where we came from or who our people are. We grew up with parents and grandparents that loved to show us old pictures or tell stories about bygone days. Sure, it may not have always seemed that interesting when we were kids, but usually we picked up enough of the details to have a sense of our roots.
But what if you landed in the USA at the age of fifteen months with no more hints to your identity than a green card and an Irish birth certificate with only a couple of boxes filled in? Such was my husband’s situation. Continue reading “Everyone Should Know Their Story – Part 1”