Latest news with #ancestry
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Who do we think we are, anyway? DNA testing is rewriting national histories
Family histories are notoriously prone to works of artistic falsehood. Shows like Who Do You Think You Are? work by showing people what lies behind half-remembered stories and occasional dubious paternity cases. National stories, however, are solid. We might be uncertain about our precise roots as individuals, but we know who we are as a nation. At least, that's what I thought. But just as cheap DNA testing has blown up fondly-held family tales – none of my ancestors were Huguenot, and one ancestor in Cork may have had to explain to Saint Peter how the Iberian ended up in my genome – it's also rewriting how we think about history. Some stories turn out to be true. King Alfred succeeded in fighting back the Danish Vikings, who left 'no obvious genetic signature'. Neither, for that matter, did the Romans: the white English as an ethnic group are essentially German, and the Welsh really are closer to the pre-Saxon people of Britain than everyone else. Other results are less expected. Ashkenazi Jews draw part of their ancestry from Levantine populations, but may draw even more from Italy. The people who built Stonehenge were replaced by the people of the Beaker culture almost entirely, leaving their fate an unpleasant mystery, and raising the uncomfortable thought that prehistory may have been a bloodier place than we like to think. And while black Americans can learn more about their African roots, they also learn about their European heritage; the descendants of slaves are also the descendants of slave-owners. It's fascinating, and it's a delight and a privilege to live in a time where we can lift some of the veil over our collective history to catch a distant glimpse of the people who made us. But does it have any real world impact? Perhaps not. I can't see the Balkans engaging in a festival of brotherly unity on realising Serbs and Croats are pretty much the same people. Even leaving aside methodological disputes – I could have written this piece claiming the English are actually Danes – there's a reason we forgot these population movements. The point of national myths isn't that they're true, but that they give us something to cohere around. They tell us who we are and how we relate to each other with such strength that other ties are forgotten. DNA may rewrite ancient history, but for better or worse – the present is here to stay. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
Who do we think we are, anyway? DNA testing is rewriting national histories
Family histories are notoriously prone to works of artistic falsehood. Shows like Who Do You Think You Are? work by showing people what lies behind half-remembered stories and occasional dubious paternity cases. National stories, however, are solid. We might be uncertain about our precise roots as individuals, but we know who we are as a nation. At least, that's what I thought. But just as cheap DNA testing has blown up fondly-held family tales – none of my ancestors were Huguenot, and one ancestor in Cork may have had to explain to Saint Peter how the Iberian ended up in my genome – it's also rewriting how we think about history. Some stories turn out to be true. King Alfred succeeded in fighting back the Danish Vikings, who left 'no obvious genetic signature'. Neither, for that matter, did the Romans: the white English as an ethnic group are essentially German, and the Welsh really are closer to the pre-Saxon people of Britain than everyone else. Other results are less expected. Ashkenazi Jews draw part of their ancestry from Levantine populations, but may draw even more from Italy. The people who built Stonehenge were replaced by the people of the Beaker culture almost entirely, leaving their fate an unpleasant mystery, and raising the uncomfortable thought that prehistory may have been a bloodier place than we like to think. And while black Americans can learn more about their African roots, they also learn about their European heritage; the descendants of slaves are also the descendants of slave-owners. It's fascinating, and it's a delight and a privilege to live in a time where we can lift some of the veil over our collective history to catch a distant glimpse of the people who made us. But does it have any real world impact? Perhaps not. I can't see the Balkans engaging in a festival of brotherly unity on realising Serbs and Croats are pretty much the same people. Even leaving aside methodological disputes – I could have written this piece claiming the English are actually Danes – there's a reason we forgot these population movements. The point of national myths isn't that they're true, but that they give us something to cohere around. They tell us who we are and how we relate to each other with such strength that other ties are forgotten. DNA may rewrite ancient history, but for better or worse – the present is here to stay.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Confronting History, Family and Race on a Road Trip to New Orleans
His hard stare meets me every morning, but now I return his gaze. The old pirate doesn't make me flinch anymore, the way he did when I was a boy, because I finally know who he is. I learned this by testing the truth of the family stories that I'd grown up with about Jacinto Lobrano, my great-great-grandfather and the pirate Jean Laffite's right-hand man, during a six-day trip along the Gulf Coast. In my father's family, this unsigned oil painting is passed down to the firstborn son, and now hangs on the wall of my house in a village outside of Uzès in France. Jacinto, who was born on the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples sometime during the 1790s, is depicted as a stern but handsome man in his late 40s, with wavy chestnut hair and a small gold earring in one ear. He presents as a prosperous and possibly respectable family man. But he was still a pirate, a fact I clung to growing up in a Connecticut suburb that pasteurized difference in defense of propriety. Though my ancestry is 95 percent British Isles, being even a tiny bit descended from a pirate made me different, maybe a little glamorous and potentially wild. As I learned the first time I read Jacinto's obituary when I was a freshman in college, he also profited from enslaving people. This shocked me, so I called my grandmother to learn more. She was vague, suggesting he'd just dabbled in the slave trade. Her temporizing didn't soothe my revulsion, so I did what millions of other white Americans have done when they discovered this evil in their family's past. I dropped this knowledge like a stone into a well of denial. Then, eight years ago, I got an Instagram message from a high school student in Mississippi named Dakota Lobrano Wallace. She'd come across me on Google and thought we might be related, and wondered if I could help fill out her family tree. It seemed likely that we had ancestors in common, since the pirate had five sons and two daughters, but I didn't know how. And it didn't entirely surprise me when I saw Dakota was African American. In New Orleans, where Jacinto Lobrano and his sons had lived, sexual relations between the races were common, often initiated by white men who forced themselves on enslaved women. I told Dakota I'd be happy to share what I knew, but warned that it would obviously be ugly. 'I'm OK with that,' she replied. I sent her everything I had, including the Nov. 12, 1880, obituary of our forebear from the New Orleans Picayune. We became friendly via occasional messages about her high school graduation, subsequent nursing school studies and my work, our immediate families and politics, and we eventually began addressing each other as 'Cuz.' According to his obituary, Jacinto and his father had left Italy because they'd been involved in a plot against the government. Eventually, they'd ended up in the Gulf of Mexico, where Jacinto fell in with the French pirate, Laffite. Jacinto was instrumental in persuading Laffite to side with the Americans during the War of 1812. Jacinto then fought so bravely during the Battle of New Orleans that Gen. Andrew Jackson presented him with a silver sword. The story passed down in my family was that when Union troops occupied New Orleans in 1862, the old pirate sent a note to the invading Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler threatening to use his most prized possession to remove his Yankee ears if anyone attempted to confiscate it. Jacinto lived in a large house at the corner of Laurel and Fourth Street and engaged in a variety of different businesses, including buying and selling enslaved people. I wrote to Dakota to see if we could meet if I came to Mississippi. When she agreed, I planned a trip along the Gulf Coast, starting in Sarasota, Fla., where I owned an apartment, with stops in Pensacola, Fla.; Ocean Springs, Miss.; and one to see Dakota in Hattiesburg, Miss., where she was working on a graduate degree in health care; and then continuing to New Orleans where I would visit another cousin. A Date in Hattiesburg So often we travel to find out who we really are and to make ourselves better with this knowing. I traveled to the American South to meet my lovely cousin in Mississippi. In ways that I could not have known, my time with Dakota would give me a deeper understanding of my heritage and of the foundations of America. Before my husband, Bruno, and I left Sarasota, I texted Dakota to make sure our Saturday lunch date in Hattiesburg was still good. She replied with a thumbs-up emoji. Driving north on Interstate 75, Bruno suggested we leave the bland highway for a back road, Route 27. The first 30 miles were dotted with live oak trees tasseled with ghostly Spanish moss and the white split-rail fences of Florida horse country. Then came towns whose names I learned from rust-streaked water towers. The towns offered a doleful refrain of billboards: Gun Shop, Bail Bond, Waffle House, Pawn Shop, Dollar General and Fried Chicken. I'd gone beyond my usual American contexts — New England, New York City, college towns. After hours on Panhandle roads lined by malls, we were pleasantly surprised by Pensacola, a city of 56,000, which had a palpable sense of history and a handsome old-fashioned walkable downtown. Though St. Augustine, Fla., founded in 1565, claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in America, Pensacola predates it. A hurricane pulverized the first settlement, but in subsequent iterations, Pensacola was a place where different cultures lived together, and the architecture in its 40-block historic district recalls New Orleans, with meticulously restored Creole-style houses lit by gas lamps on streets with French and Spanish names. The next day, I received a text from Dakota. Her grandmother had just gone into hospice care, and she was studying for final exams. 'I have a lot going on right now,' she said. I wondered if she was going to cancel. Bruno and I reached the flat shoreline of Mississippi, where the charm of arty Ocean Springs came from its Victorian wooden cottages with fretwork eaves, shade trees, jazz bars like the Julep Room and excellent restaurants. I found myself glancing at my phone so often I turned it off for a while. Late that night my phone buzzed, and I jumped. Dakota texted me to choose the restaurant for lunch and let her know what time. I did some internet scrolling and chose a well-rated Thai place called Jutamas. The Day Arrives Rural Mississippi looked red and raw in the rain under a low pewter sky as we drove north to Hattiesburg the next day. When we got to Jutamas, we sat at a table with elaborately folded black napkins and an orchid spray in a bud vase, and I nervously watched the vivid fish whose world had been reduced from an ocean to an aquarium. Through the restaurant's front window, I saw Dakota park, check her makeup in the rearview mirror and straighten out her gold hoop earrings before she came inside with a big soft smile. I saw her before she saw me, and I was awed by her poise and the bravery it took to come meet a middle-aged white man and his French husband, on her own. (I had suggested she bring her sister, mother or a friend, if it would make her more comfortable, but she said she'd come on her own.) I stood up and gave her a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. Then we sat down and just looked at each other and laughed. We shared an ancestor but were basically strangers. Once a fumble of pleasantries had passed, and we'd ordered lunch, I delicately — I hoped — began to probe our family connection. Dakota pulled out her phone and began scrolling through generations of photos of her family. She was descended from Philip Lobrano, one of Jacinto's five sons. I'm descended from another of the sons, Dominick, and I didn't know anything about the lineages of his other offspring. As she scrolled, I was confused, because I could not tell whether the people in the older photos were Black or white. But, Dakota told me, her great-grandfather, Philip Posey Lobrano, had 11 children with a woman named Ana Floyd, who was one-eighth Black, making her what was classified as an 'octoroon.' In the next generation there was a photo of Dakota's grandmother, Bertha Otkins Lobrano, an African-American woman. She had married Peter Lobrano, a son of Philip Posey Lobrano and Ana Floyd. 'Even though Peter Lobrano looked white, he had to take a Black bride because of his octoroon mother,' Dakota explained. 'In a small town like Centreville, Mississippi, everyone knew who had Black blood,' she went on. 'The way the color line worked is that if you had any Black blood at all, you married someone else who was Black, because most white people didn't mess with the color line.' I began to apologize for my oversight, but Dakota waved it away. 'I'm Black, and I live in the South, Alec,' she said. 'It's just baked into everything.' She also told us that Philip Posey Lobrano had three sisters who lived in Centreville, but their descendants were not in touch with Dakota's branch of the family. 'They just swept us under the carpet,' she said. 'We were an embarrassment to them.' Dakota knew most of the same stories about Jacinto that I did, which made them ring true. She also mentioned that when she misbehaved as a child, her maternal grandmother would say, 'That's just your Lobrano acting up,' and shake her head. By the time we took some selfies of ourselves in the parking lot, I was humbled. It was Dakota's kindness and graciousness that had made our meeting so happy, for me anyway. Dakota said she hoped she'd see us again and I promised she would. The squeaking of the windshield wipers in a thunderstorm woke me from a nap in the car while Bruno drove us back to our hotel. I sat in a silence swollen by the sweetness of having met Dakota. I also felt stung by my ignorance of her life as an African-American and the power of the color line in the American South. Following in Jacinto's footsteps On a Sunday morning, as we neared New Orleans, a stiff wind was whipping up white caps on the broad briny waters of Lake Pontchartrain. In the footsteps of Jacinto Lobrano, we wandered the candle-wax scented dimness of St. Louis Cathedral, where he'd married, and visited the Cabildo, which was built by the Spanish between 1795 and 1799 to house the government, to see the portrait of Jean Lafitte, the chief of Jacinto's band of pirates. We had dinner with my second cousin Ann and her husband, Gene, at Galatoire's in the French Quarter that night. When I showed Ann and Gene a picture of Dakota on my phone, they nodded but didn't engage. Sitting in a flat-bottom boat during a bayou tour 16 miles south of New Orleans in the Mississippi Delta the next morning, I listened to the fascinating recitation of our guide-navigator with his beguilingly soft Cajun accent. He pointed out sunning alligators and mentioned that these murky byways had once been the preserve of pirates. These were the steamy mosquito-ridden swamps where Jacinto had spent his youth. Until he'd given up piracy to run his sugar plantation and profit from human slavery, he'd been a thief, an outlaw and an outcast. It was astonishing to see how much storytelling, including his obituaries, and my family's myth-making had tempered Jacinto's ignominious biography into that of an eminent local grandee. That afternoon, we visited the Confederate Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans, where the silver sword Jacinto had received as a gift from Andrew Jackson is part of the collection, viewable by appointment. Wearing a pair of flimsy white muslin gloves, I held the heavy blade with a beautiful gold-chased silver scabbard. Of all the stories I'd heard about my great-great grandfather, the one I'd most doubted was the one about the sword. Suddenly, I desperately wished Dakota were there with me to share the moment. We left New Orleans for the drive back to Florida, stopping at one point at a roadside picnic table. Unexpectedly, I welled up while unwrapping a turkey sandwich. My sudden gushing was fed by exhaustion, happiness, relief and shame, a very deep shame. I'd finally realized that the real reason for my trip was that I was seeking atonement. I'd failed, too, because there could be no atonement. Still, if meeting Dakota couldn't change the past, I still hoped we'd begun to repair an ugly rent in our family's history with the only thing that might mend it: the truth. When I later asked Dakota if she agreed, she hesitated. Then she said, 'You're family, Alec,' and I was very moved. 'But I don't know that we can ever really mend America, because racism was built into the foundations of this country.' I suggested we could try. 'I don't know, Alec. I think it's easier to be optimistic if you're white than it is if you're Black,' she said, adding, 'But sure, at least maybe we can fix our own broken brick.' Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Woman discovers horrific secret about her husband after taking ancestry test
A mother-of-two claims her life was 'flipped on its head' when she took an ancestry test that revealed the shocking truth about her husband. The woman purchased the Ancestry DNA test on a whim as something 'fun' to do—hoping she and her husband would learn more about their families in the process. But instead they received devastating news that they were, in fact, siblings. In a viral post on Reddit the woman, who knew she was conceived via a sperm donor, wrote: 'We got the results, and… I matched with him. My husband. As a half-sibling.' The couple were horrified to discover they shared the same biological father—particularly as the husband had never known he, too, was donor conceived. 'At first, I thought it had to be some kind of mistake, or maybe I misunderstood something. 'But no, after looking into it, we realised his dad was also a donor, and no one ever told him. 'Now, here we are, married for years with two kids, and we're still trying to figure out how to process the fact that we're siblings.' The mother of two went on the detail the fallout following the unsettling match. 'I don't even know how to explain how I feel. It's just… overwhelming. I love him, of course, but this changes so much. I just feel kind of lost. 'We've already spoken to a genetic counselor, and we're trying to move forward, but it's like everything we thought we knew about our family has been flipped upside down.' Around 4.7million of the British population is estimated to have used a DNA-testing kit—encouraged by the popularity of ITV series DNA Journey, which traced the ancestry of pairings including Ant and Dec and entertainers Amanda Holden and Alan Carr. Customers simply provide a spit sample, which is placed into a tube then sent back to the company's laboratory. The £94 Ancestry DNA test analyses 700,000 genetic markers—specific points in a person's DNA that can offer clues about ancestral origins. This genetic data is then compared to population samples from over 350 regions around the world. These regions represent groups of people who have lived in the same area for many generations and developed distinct genetic patterns. By identifying similarities between an individual's DNA and these regional patterns, the test estimates where their ancestors may have lived. Commenting on the Reddit post, one user wrote: 'This was bound to happen somewhere in the world, at some point, given the current unregulated fertility industry that puts profits above the rights and interests of the donor conceived child. In the UK, using donor sperm for insemination requires going through a licensed fertility clinic. This ensures the sperm is screened for health issues and genetic diseases, and that the insemination process is overseen by qualified professionals. A donor's sperm can be used to create babies for a maximum of ten families, and the donor is not legally recognised as the father of any child born through the process. However earlier this year, Dutch medics have revealed that sperm from just 85 donors was used to father thousands of children, leading to fears of accidental inbreeding among the country's population. The country's gynaecology and obstetrics organisation, the NVOG, said that at least 85 men have become 'mass donors', defined as having fathered 25 or more children each. The organisation revealed that Dutch fertility clinics have been breaking strict rules around donations for decades. The most famous mass donor was Jonathan Meijer, a notorious Dutch YouTuber who has so far fathered 550 children and was the star of Netflix documentary 'The Man with 1,000 Kids.' The 43-year-old faced a lawsuit in 2023 due to fears of unintentional incest and inbreeding between his children, and because he had gone well past the Dutch limit of fathering 25 donor children.
Buzz Feed
23-02-2025
- General
- Buzz Feed
15 People Who Kept Their Secrets Under Wraps Their Whole Life...Only For The Beans To Spill After Their Death
When we die, sometimes we leave some skeletons in the closet that maaaybe were never supposed to be found. 1. "My mom died in 2002. She had been in the Women's Army Corps in World War II. When we got a copy of her DD 214 (her discharge papers), there was a different last name on the form. It seemed she had been married before, which we never knew about. We found his name and found he had died overseas in the war." "We could never find their marriage certificate, and everyone that might have known had already passed. So, we went to his hometown to see if his name was on a monument with World War II veterans. We found his name with a star, meaning he was killed in the war, and her name as his wife under his name. A very surreal moment." —Anonymous 2. "My dad signed up to an ancestry site after his dad died, and we discovered that his late father (who always thought he was an only child and always wanted siblings) actually had three older half-brothers he never knew about." "Turns out my great-grandfather (who was English) had a family, went away to fight in WW1, and instead of going home to them, moved to Canada instead — marrying my great-grandmother, having my poppa, and then moving to New Zealand. Crazy what you could get away with back in the day with no technology!" — bougielamp63 3. "After my father died, it was revealed he'd left a small, but not insignificant, amount of money to a home for unwed mothers. My siblings and I couldn't help but wonder if he'd had an affair and sent a mistress there to have a baby, though this seemed implausible, given how devoted he was to taking care of his family. Years later, at 98, his older sister finally spilled the beans…" "They had a younger sister, who preceded my dad and older aunt in death. We absolutely adored her. She loved kids and spoiled all of her nieces and nephews like crazy. But she didn't marry or have children of her own. However, we learned that while serving in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, she fell in love with a soldier stationed at the same military installation. Just as WWII came to an end, she became pregnant. She believed they would marry and build a life together. But, when she told him about the pregnancy, he admitted he was already married and would return to his wife and children when the war ended." —Anonymous (Cont'd) "She was devastated. Being a single mother was not really an option in the 1940s, so our dad and aunt arranged for her to go to this home for unwed mothers, where she stayed until she had the baby and placed her for adoption. They never told anyone. My dad and aunt told their parents, family members, and friends she had been offered a civilian job at the base and would remain there for several months after the war ended before returning to their hometown." "She was so heartbroken; she had never married or had a family. Her child, if living, would now be about 80 years old. We've never been able to find out any information about her. It turns out we were right about our father's commitment to taking care of the family. He had left the money to the home as an 'expression of gratitude' for caring for his youngest sister when she most needed help." —Anonymous 4. "My dad worked for the FBI. He wasn't a nice man to me, but the world loved him. He was popular and semi-powerful. Mr 'always do things by the book.' He got dementia and moved away to the Midwest. When he died, I didn't care much. I was glad not to be told how my job makes me gay (as if a career defines your sexuality). There was no funeral. But, two to three weeks later, I got a call from the police chief in the town I grew up in. He said, 'Your dad left a storage unit. Do you want to go clean it out before it's sold?' I said sure and opened the unit with the chief.'" "It looked like an exact replica of his office. Super strange. But inside were boxes and boxes of coffee cans. There were over 100 boxes, 10 cans each minimum. Some in the desk, in a safe, on a bookshelf. The chief said, 'Wow, that's a lotta coffee.' So, I opened a can, and inside was a stack of 20-dollar bills with a bank collar. The next can. Same thing. The whole box. Same thing. The next box I frantically opened was actually coffee until I shook it a little, and a 1/2 kilo of coke fell out. What I discovered was an FBI stash locker left over from the '80s. It had a sheet of every drug dealer they busted, who flipped, who's being watched. The FBI let me keep a lil' cash. And a few knicknacks. I never told anyone about it. But I wasn't sworn to secrecy, either. It's been 40 years since the list was relevant." —Anonymous 5. "Back in the early '80s, when I was 12, my mom had a breast cancer scare but didn't tell anyone about it. I came home one day to find her recuperating in the living room. This was when a breast cancer diagnosis meant sure death, btw, but my mom was just fine. No chemo or anything, just removal of some suspicious tumors. As an adult, I went mostly uninsured until I was in my 40s (thank you, Obama!), so I spent big money on yearly mammograms and, when it became available, genetic testing to ensure any potential breast cancer was caught early. I often talked about my fear with my mom, but I have been just fine. Nary a suspicious spot in 50 years, and I tested negative on all genetic tests." "After my mom died, I was going through her medical records, and lo and behold, she never had breast cancer. Not a single cell. In 1981, she got a boob job. Now I know why she couldn't afford the braces and dental exams I badly needed in junior high. So, on top of $10k+ spent on tests I didn't need and decades of anxiety, I've also suffered decades of debilitating and expensive dental treatment — extractions, root canals, crowns, implants, partials, and all the accompanying agony — because of her lying and selfishness. And this was just a small revelation in an infinite sea of posthumously discovered narcissistic manipulations and lies about me that she had told the whole family." —Anonymous 6. "After my aunt died, we found letters that she worked as a high-priced sex worker to support her kids when her husband left her. She had a long-time affair with a local attorney who arranged for her to work as a sex worker. From the outside, her life seemed pretty charmed. She paid for all of her kids to attend college. She told everyone she was a legal assistant, and her attorney got support money out of her husband, who abandoned the family." "After some digging, we found her first husband died shortly after he left. Her siblings felt so bad because she never asked for any money and never gave a clue that she was so bad off that she had to work as a sex worker to keep food on the table." —Anonymous 7. "My maternal grandmother lived with us for five years before she died so we could take care of her as her dementia got worse. Her husband, my grandpa, died about 25 years prior, even before my parents got married. In the '60s and '70s, my mom and her family lived in Tahoe City, CA, and Reno, NV. My grandpa owned many businesses, one of which was a printing press. In the '70s, the ability to control the press was the ability to control the people. So, my mom would always say her dad was constantly asked to join the Mafia. He always said no, not wanting to put his family at risk." "As kids, we thought it was cool but stopped believing it as we grew up. (Add to this, Godfather Part II was filmed in Tahoe, and my mom's whole family got roles as extras. My grandpa can be seen running down the hill as one of the henchmen, and you can see my mom scratching the back of her head in the wedding scene). Anyway, after my grandma passed, we were going through her things: pictures, old keepsakes, all the broken china she swore she would fix, etc. We found a box of my grandpa's things. Going through my grandpa's stuff, we found an old wallet. It had a few business cards, old credit cards, and photos. But one card was a little bit thicker and in big black serif font it said: 'You have just been assisted by a member of the Cosa Nostra.' Papa Carmen, you were the coolest, and I'm sad every day I didn't get to know you." —Anonymous 8. "In the '90s, my aunt and her husband took in her father-in-law, who lived with them for about 10 years before he eventually died from prolonged illness (his wife had passed many years before they took him in). My aunt was his primary caregiver during that entire period. About 10 years after he passed, her husband did an ancestry test and discovered that he had half-siblings in another part of the country that he did not know about. After speaking with his newfound family, it all became clear that his 'dad,' who had lived with them for so long, was not at all his biological father." "Come to find out, his mother had gotten pregnant with him by a serviceman during WW2 who was only passing through town at the time and with whom she had no further contact. His 'dad' had met his mother within weeks of this happening and almost immediately agreed to marry her and raise the child as his own. So, his 'dad' took her secret to the grave and never spilled the beans to anyone about his mother's promiscuous relations with a complete stranger. Had it not been for modern technology, no one would've ever discovered their little secret." —Anonymous 9. "After my grandmother passed, while cleaning out piles of documents, we discovered a whole new story in our family history. At the start of WW1, my great-grandfather got drafted and left for the front, telling my then-pregnant great-grandmother that when the baby was born, she was to 'name him after his father.' A year later, he returned from war and raised my grandfather, 'William Henry.' Then, one day in the late '50s, when he went to the courthouse to finally get a copy of his birth certificate, my grandfather found out he was named after his father — it just wasn't the man who raised him. Birth certificates and social security cards weren't really necessary for anything back in those days, so my grandfather never questioned his name." "My great-grandmother took it to her grave that he was actually named after an actor who grew to decent fame over his lifetime... because he was the father! In turn, both my grandparents took it to their graves about this family secret until we found the birth certificate stapled to a notarized set of court documents where my grandfather had his name legally changed to 'William Henry.' We have no idea if the actor ever knew he had a child. We just knew from stories that my great-grandmother had always had a big crush on that actor. Now we know why!" —Anonymous 10. "My sister married a guy she knew all through high school when they were 28. Our family thought he was a deadbeat, which turned out to be true. He was abusive and controlling, and she was the only one who worked even while pregnant. She had a baby girl and finally got free of him. He died at 34 of cancer. I looked at him in the coffin and said, 'Good riddance' to his corpse. Fast forward 30 years, and her grown daughter informs my sister she has a brother, as revealed by a DNA test!" "Dazed and confused by all this, it turns out her first, no-count husband had a 10-year-old son by another classmate when she married him, but he took the secret to the grave and never told my sister. The big secret was because his son was mixed-race, and his father was a member of the KKK. The happy ending to all of this is that we are all a loving family. This gave healing to the son and a much-needed half-brother to my niece while the racist bastards roll over in their graves." — witchyshark72 11. "My dad's parents divorced in 1930 when he was 3. His father got custody of the kids and remarried within a year. There was no further contact between my dad and his birth mother. In 1974, my dad got a call from a man who said he was his brother. It seemed that my dad's birth mom was pregnant at the time of the divorce and raised that son alone, never telling him about his siblings. It was after her death that this brother, going through his mother's effects, found all the reports from detective agencies she had used to keep track of her two older children." "The reports were up-to-date right to her death. Odder yet is that, even though she briefly remarried, she raised him with my grandad's last name and lived just a few miles from her ex-husband and children for many years after the divorce. I've always wondered what she told him about his father and whether Grandad even knew he had another son." — odaydaniel 12. "After my uncle passed away, his daughters, siblings, and I went to clean his house (he lived alone). One of his daughters came running out of his office, asking if we knew he had an ex-wife (she found their divorce papers, pictures, and love letters). We were bewildered to find out his daughters had no clue about this. The only reason we could think of that they were kept in the dark was the fact he had an affair with their mother, who got pregnant and was the reason he left his first wife (their mom knew he was a married man and also kept this a secret from their daughters)." "His other daughter then came out of his room with a marriage certificate with ANOTHER woman only my mom knew about (not even my cousin's mom, his ex-wife by now, knew this). My mom confessed he had a child with his first wife, but he did not even know if the child was a boy or a girl because the wife left him before the baby was born. His shocked daughters (and the rest of us) wondered if we'd find more marriage or divorce certificates (we didn't). I now think that, at some level, I knew about his past. He gave me a doll when I was about 9, and we named her Kelly Marie, which were his first two ex-wives' names." —Anonymous 13. "At my grandmother's funeral, a number of relatives on my dad's side commented to my mom about what a shame it was that my grandmother had passed away 'too soon' or 'so young.' Many times that day, my mother had to explain that my grandmother was actually 83 when she died, not 73 like they thought she was." "When my parents got engaged, my grandmother started telling people (such as my dad's side of the family) that she was 10 years younger than she actually was. Those of us who knew the truth — her children, grandchildren, and some nieces and nephews — never contradicted her because we knew how much pride she took in passing for someone 10 years younger. She credited her youthful appearance to a particular moisturizer that she used every morning and night without fail. It took a few years before we stopped hearing random comments at family gatherings like 'I can't believe she was actually 83!' Honestly, their continued amazement would have made my grandmother proud. She certainly found a way to be remembered by all!" —Anonymous 14. "My mother and her siblings always wondered where my grandma disappeared to for the year she was gone and why their dad left them in the children's home during that time. Long after her death and shortly after his, they found the letters. She was in jail for something he did." "While she was in jail trying to make sure her family was kept together, he was busy getting a new one and left them at the children's home. She fought for years after she got out to get them all back under one roof, and he acted like it was no big deal." —Anonymous And lastly: 15. "Finding out my uncle had a secret child wasn't a big shock. In fact, that was not really surprising when I think about it. The shock came in finding all this out after both my mother's parents died, where we learned that my grandparents played a major part in concealing this fact from my mom. Worse, when we found out that my uncle had been seeing two women and got both women pregnant at the same time, it was my grandparents who chose which woman he would marry... for their own selfish reasons." "They chose the woman who was the nurse to be his wife because they wanted her to take care of them when they got older. Then, they forbid all contact with the other woman, and hence, my uncle's daughter grew up without a father. He went off to have three children with the 'approved' wife. After finding all this out, my mom reached out to her exiled niece, and now she's the cousin I'm closest with. I haven't spoken to my uncle or his 'accepted' family in over 25 years. He shunned his own firstborn, and my grandparents allowed it to happen. I loved my grandparents, but their actions really tarnished their image for me." —Anonymous If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.
