Mystery Solved

That was the message I received on Ancestry, first of the month, from a match who contacted me four years ago asking, “How are we related?”

She showed up as a 1st-2nd Cousin 5% shared DNA, has been researching for ten years, and has made discoveries as far back as 1883 — who begat who, where this one and that one is buried.

I had no idea how we were related. Actually could have cared less, because the only reason I’m even on Ancestry was to put my DNA into the system so those sent out into the world at birth, through no fault of their own, can have a pathway to finding where they came from should they go seeking when they become of age.

Over the last four years, I’d occasionally hear from the match — who refers to herself as “Your DNA Cousin” and, for purposes of the blog, I’m calling her Genie — short for Genealogists, asking if I knew this person, that person, who my father was.

I didn’t recognize the names she offered up but, though I'd never met him, I did know my father’s name.

Long time readers might recall my having mentioned the first, last and only time I ever saw my dad was when he was in his coffin.

Mom had tricked me into travelling out of state to attend his funeral and, curious to see what the man looked like before they closed the coffin, I asked the half-sister I’d just discovered I had — who picked me up at the airport (one of his daughters by the woman he’d left my mom for when I was six months old) stop by the funeral home, so I could see his face.

So, yes, I did know his name, gave that information to Genie, also my half-sister’s name, and Genie ran with it.

I think that was about two years ago, that I gave her that info.

First of this month I get a message “DNA Connection Solved … your grandfather and my grandfather are brothers!”

Big Whoop, but if she’s happy and excited at the discovery, I’m happy for her.

How the mystery was solved was that, continuing to expand on contacting DNA matches, she lucked up on someone who possessed this information, actually had a photo of our grandfathers together.

Mine                                Hers

After her long and arduous search of records, reaching out to others, spending four years on my DNA connection to her, this coming across someone who actually had a photo was, in her words “This has been an almost over whelming spiritual experience”.

Bless her heart.

Being more concerned with where I go from here, what comes after this parenthesis in eternity, I could care less about my roots, but I did find some of her discoveries interesting, stories she’d gleaned.

When I told her how my dad had left my mother, she remembered a conversation she’d heard as a child that her father had with his younger brother, who had left his wife and 2 young children and that, in doing this research, she’d discovered it was a pattern with men on my father’s side — they did not have a problem with marrying a wife, leaving her, marrying another wife, leaving her.

Evidently, the men of past generations, on my father’s side, were players.

My mother, when she was exasperated with me, would say I was “stuck up, just like them”.

“Them” being his side of the family.

I was never “stuck up”, just painfully shy, quiet, meditative, closed off, non-reactive, detached (which seemed to drive some people crazy, my being non-reactive and detached) and mom read it as stuck up; but evidently my father’s side of the family was actually stuck up … thought they were better than.

Genie wrote, "The story is that our great grandmother came from a family of very light skinned Blacks and that her family did not like it when she married our great grandfather, who was dark (because their family tradition was to marry ‘light’)".

In today’s vernacular, ancestors on that side would be labelled as “color struck” — prejudiced against those of their race with a dark skin tone. All in all, from what I've learned of my father's side, they’d also be labelled as bourgeois/boujee.

This so-called family tradition would explain why, in the many matches Ancestry tells me are 2nd, 3rd up to 6th cousins, I see extremely light skinned faces and whites — all on my father’s side.

I do wonder how those faces react when they see with whom they are matched.

Are they shocked?

Embarrassed?

Ashamed?

Or are they proud to know they've got a little color in 'em?

So, anyway, it’s been interesting hearing some of the stories Genie has gleaned and seeing old photos she's provided me, but I don’t think I would have liked or been able to get along with those stuck-ups/boogies who came before, my dad included.