DNA Test Leads to Lost Family
My husband has an ancestor who was adopted, and never knew who his birth parents were. Through Ancestry DNA, I was able to figure out who the long lost birth parents were.
When I began to really look through my husband's DNA matches to figure out this puzzle, it helped so much that both of his parents had also had done Ancestry DNA tests. I could sort the matches to only see the maternal or paternal side, which allowed me to eliminate half the DNA matches from my search.
There were a also few matches that I could eliminate due to the trees that were linked to their profiles. I could see that they matched to unrelated parts of the family tree. There were many, many matches that I had no clue how they connected. Luckily, some of those matches had trees posted. I copied every tree I found that didn't fit into the known family tree. I could also sort the unconnected matches to see if they matched to each other.
I was starting to see that there were two groups of people. I came to find out that these two groups were from the maternal and paternal sides of the ancestor I was researching. I was able to find somewhat distant cousins, such as first cousins twice removed and second cousins and compare all the trees I had copied earlier to figure out the connections.
One name that kept popping up was Silas Alexander Harris. Silas would have been in his 50's when the ancestor was born, and Silas was married with a family. I haven't determined when his wife died, but I thought it was an unlikely match. Silas and his wife, Elizabeth Jane Coberly, had 12 children that I had found record for, so I started to look onto all of the children's spouses and families.
The second group of matches I found all traced back to the Mohler family. I finally realized that one of the Harris sons was married to a Mohler daughter, and there was a close-ish DNA match to one of their descendants. The match was 546cM , which indicates the matched person would be a great-great aunt, a first cousin once removed, or a great great niece. The potential parents were Harley Upton Harris and Della Mohler. These two were married well before and both remained alive well after the ancestor was born. Interestingly, Harley Harris had a twin brother.
There is no way to know now if Harley and his brother were identical or not, so I couldn't eliminate the possibility that there had been an affair between Harley's brother and his wife Della. Harley's brother Harvey had been married three times and had no children. He was married to his first wife when the ancestor was born. I don't think there is any way to determine if the twin Harvey was the father of the ancestor, so I decided to ignore him.
The final piece of the puzzle was the children of Harley and Della. They had two daughters listed in the 1910 US Census. I haven't found any other records for the oldest daughter. The 1920 and 1930 Censuses only show the second daughter with her parents. I searched the Ancestry database for Harley and Della, and a birth certificate came up for a son. Although Harvey and Della lived in Illinois, the son was born in the same town in Indiana as the ancestor I was researching.
Oddly, this son was born in 1915, but was never shown in a census with his parents. I also found him under a different last name with another family. When I searched further, there was an older son, born in 1911, who was also placed with another family. I Googled both their names, and found one of their descendants. I sent them a message, and was able to get some interesting information.
It appears that several children of Harley and Della were adopted away. I've found evidence of at least three sons and two daughters. It appears that they raised one of the daughters themselves, but I could be wrong about that. The descendant also told me that at least two boys were placed in the Frances Comfort Thomas Home for Orphans and Destitute Children in Columbus, Indiana. Apparently the two brothers were initially adopted together, but the family returned one of them to the orphanage. I found one newspaper article that listed my husband's adopted ancestor as having a brother, so maybe it was his family that initially adopted the two brothers.
Once I had a set of people that I thought were the biological parents, I could compare the DNA matches to see if the results showed the expected relationships. Everything seemed to line up, so now I am fairly certain that Harvey and Della were the birth parents of the ancestor I was researching.
I still have questions that need to be answered. Why did this family give up so many children? Did the youngest son also get placed in the Frances Comfort Thomas Home? When did the adoptions take place? How long did these children spend in the home? Are there more kids that were adopted away I haven't found yet? Is there any way I could get a list of the kids that lived in the home?
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