People Lie – DNA doesn’t! Who’s your daddy?

As a professional genealogist/family historian I’ve helped solve many different, complex family secrets – discovered several proverbial ‘skeletons in the closet’. Hunting ancestors to piece together family, social & local histories in conjunction with genetic genealogy has led to many questionable relatives of my own & had me asking “who’s your Daddy” on more than one occasion.

I’ve documented my family history for many years using a mixture of ‘known’ lineage, documents, family memory & legend. I had copies of certificates for life events, a multitude of photos, letters & postcards as well as several family memories. My maternal side was a given – sublimely documented with much evidence including photos, birth, marriage & death certificates, letters, newspaper articles among other pieces of ‘proof’ of my ancestry. Or so we believed! 

My maternal lineage was all English & Irish with a smattering of Scottish & possibly some German according to family legend. Frank, my maternal grandfather was the first & only child of parents Elizabeth, born in Sydney in 1878 & William, born in Hobart in 1869. Elizabeth’s parents were Catherine & Joseph, both born in New South Wales in the mid 1850’s. Catherine to a ‘free’ English miner called Henry & his wife Sarah, an ex-convict who’d been transported for 7 years, both born in England. Ultimately they raised their family in Wattle Flat NSW.  Joseph was a carpenter & the first born of Joseph Snr. & Ann, both of whom were born in England & raised their family in Jamberoo NSW.

Thoroughly researched over many years with traditional genealogical methods prior to the advent of domestic DNA testing, my maternal lines were all but set in stone! Fast forward to Mum & I taking the first DNA tests of our family to confirm what we already knew. Surprise – we discovered a new ancestral group. At first, being inexperienced in the field of genetic genealogy, we wondered if something had gone wrong during testing or reporting of our results? 

This theory was quickly debunked as DNA doesn’t lie, people do. So the only possibilities seemed to be someone, somewhere in our ancestry had been incorrectly documented or had an illegitimate child or a child from an elicit encounter that we hadn’t discovered yet. Intrigued, I studied all the information regarding genetic genealogy I possibly could & talked to many fellow Genealogists. It was fascinating, science is intriguing & can be used to trace ancestors who are long gone. 

Our DNA matches were sorted into groups & various methods used to triangulate, I eventually isolated a large family group of DNA matches originating from southern Tasmania. The matches with family trees on Ancestry were targeted first by sending messages to them. Alas, this didn’t give many answers but did produce more questions.

Late one night I received a reply from a lady in New Zealand. She was a good sized match with my mother, brother & myself & she had some clue about her Tasmanian lineage & she was willing to share – wow – the holy grail of genealogy! Many messages were sent to and fro across the ditch, comparing matches, stories, legends & photos, it was amazing. So how come we couldn’t figure out where we intersected precisely? We did manage to narrow the field, we had at least pinpointed the family where we appeared to belong & we had much information on many new ancestors. We couldn’t however, sort how we had become part of this family. 

Over the next couple of years & several new DNA matches, I narrowed our entry point to my maternal grandfather – either his daddy wasn’t who everyone believed or his father William was the product of an elicit affair. I used traditional genealogy, physical documents & familial memory in conjunction with legend, DNA and a fabulous genetic genealogy tool called WATO (What Are The Odds) which is one component of a suite of tools to help with DNA mysteries. More information can be found here – https://dnapainter.com/

I am 95% certain my grandfather was the product of an affair & the gentleman who married my great grandmother, raised her son & claimed him as his own was a marvel. I choose to believe William knew my grandfather was not his son & loved him anyway. Of course, I have no proof of this & it’s equally possible William was in a relationship with Elizabeth and figured he better marry her because he impregnated her. My version is more romantic

This type of familial conundrum is almost impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt due to the age of those involved, lack of documentation and because they covered it up well. Had either William or Elizabeth left a nice letter detailing what happened, then there would be proof but ce la vie – no such document exists and my grandfather always believed William to be his father.