Meeting My Father(through his kids)

zn wrote:

Very interesting story PA. Good for you.

If you don’t mind crossing the line and getting personal a bit, what was the clue in the obituary?

This was where a bit of luck came into play.

I had a name, as I said. But many people share names. A name, by itself, is a bit meaningless. For example, if his name was John Smith(it isn’t)there might be thousands of John Smiths. There has to be other things to connect. My son was doing research on some different church records and found that my mother and John Smith’s father–let’s say Bob Smith, went to the same church. We were keying in on any connections to the Smith name(it isn’t quite that common a name in real life)and this connection to a Smith family would matter.

In any case, time went on and nothing of real substance happened.

Then one day we saw that a “John Smith” has passed away in Pennsylvania. We saw the names of his wife and children in the obituary but this was clearly a longshot. There was no way to connect this to me. But the info was critical.

Because then I did the DNA test.

And it came up with a match to a “Frank Smith” which was the name in the obituary of John Smith’s son. My wife started trying to check different trees and found that this John Smith’s father’s name matched the one my son found in the church records.

I got lucky for several reasons but one reason is that on DNA testing sites you don’t have to put your name. You can use initials or names likes we use here. But John Smith’s son did not.

It all seemed to confirm it for me. But I knew nothing about him beyond the obituary.

I should explain, in case you don’t know, or haven’t done any DNA tests, that relationships are predicted through something called centimorgans. Basically, as I understand they are a sort of measurement. In any case–the higher the centimorgans, the closer the relationship. I matched at a half-sibling level.

Still, I hadn’t heard from Frank Smith and so I figured I’d never know.

Until another match showed up.

Frank’s sister matched me. But I didn’t know it was her because she didn’t have her real name on the match.

But she contacted me. She was curious.

And she had the name in the obituary matching the daughter.

So I responded and we figured out that the guy in the obituary WAS the right John Smith. He was my father.

She has been great, telling me so much, essentially bringing him to life for me. Yes–they are all shocked. And yes–they are trying to wrap their minds around this. But they are also curious and welcoming and open to all of it and looking forward to meeting me. And that’s pretty cool.

But yes–luck and some research and some science all came together to solve this puzzle.