March 14, 2020
1. The Introduction
Who are you? Has anyone ever asked you that? Have you asked yourself that? There are several answers that you can give. First, and most common, is you tell them your name and maybe what you do for a living. There are the humorous movie quotes you can drop such as “I’m Batman” or “I’m no one to be trifled with” (from The Princess Bride). There are the humorous philosophical ones like “Isn’t that what we spend our whole lives trying to answer?” Obviously, the serious answers are surface level answers and don’t really address who the real you really is. A deeper answer could be something based on your family: “I come from a long line of…”. That usually implies a whole set of things, including your bloodline. For adopted people, it’s not that simple. Back when I was born, in 1964, adoption records were sealed. The birth parents never knew anything about the adopted family, and the child and adopted family never knew anything about the birth parents. Therefore, that whole family blood ties connection was severed.
Also, since I don’t have any kids of my own, my bloodline would never go forward. I was sort of a biological island.
On the flip side, though, I never really missed that. I was adopted a couple of months after being born. I always knew that I was adopted, and it was no big thing. I was never treated any different because I was adopted. I was just part of the family. Same with my sister, who was adopted from some other family. I was just a Kephart. My mom was June Kephart and my dad was George Kephart. They were my parents, full stop. Same with all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. My having been adopted was about as significant to me as my hair color or my height, which is to say, it was insignificant. I mentioned it to friends and coworkers in conversation when that sort of thing came up. They would always ask, “Aren’t you curious?”. To which I would reply, “Not really.” I mean, it might be nice to know if I could have any inherited diseases, or how my hairline would fare, and that’s about it. I knew who I considered to be my family.
2. The Nudge
Things changed when I got married in 2001. Laura became more curious than I was. She was sure that my birth mom was still out there, always wondering in the back of her mind how I was doing. She gave me the nudge to find out who my mom was so that I could tell her that I turned out fine.
In 2014, for whatever reason, I pulled out a box of stuff to show Laura that included baby pictures, some papers that my parents had filled out, and some information about the agency that handled my adoption, which was the Children’s Home Society (CHS). Laura looked into what they could give us regarding my adoption, and found out that for $100, we could get a “Non-Identifying Background Report”. Since she was so determined to find out about my mother, I grudgingly agreed and we submitted the paperwork. Several weeks later, we received it. It contained paragraphs about the following, without any names of people or cities.
- my birth mother
- my birth mother’s family
- my birth father
- my birth father’s family
- the relationship my birth parents had
- medical information about my mother and myself
As far as using the information to track my birth mother down, there were several clues:
- She was 25 years of age at the time of my birth (born about 1939)
- She was born in Canada and was of German and Polish descent
- She was married and was a housewife. She had a daughter who was 2 years of age at the time of my birth and was born in Canada
- My maternal grandfather was about 54 years of age at the time of my birth (born about 1910)
- He was born in Poland or Germany
- He was artistic and painted a number of pictures (that turned out to be useful)
- My maternal grandmother was about 50 years of age at the time of my birth (born about 1914)
- She was born in Poland or Germany
- She immigrated to the United States with an aunt
- My birth mother had three brothers born in Canada
- Her eldest brother was about 27 years of age at the time of my birth (born about 1937)
- Her next eldest brother was about 24 years of age at the time of my birth (born about 1940)
- Her youngest brother was about 22 years of age at the time of my birth (born about 1942)
There was far less about my birth father and his family:
- My birth father was about 27 years of age at the time of my birth (born about 1937)
- He was born in Canada and was of Scottish descent
- He was separated from his wife and had two children
- My paternal grandfather was deceased by the time of my birth. He passed away at about 50 years of age
- My birth father had three sisters ranging in age from “15 — 20 yrs. older.”
As far as my birth parents relationship goes, they knew each other for some time and were separated from their spouses when they began dating. My birth mother struggled to provide for her daughter as a single parent and decided to end her relationship with my birth father and return to her husband. Subsequently, she learned of the pregnancy; she did not inform my birth father.
That’s a lot of information, but completely unusable until I could match pieces of it to specific individuals. That’s when we decided that I would sign up with Ancestry.com and do their DNA test. So I did that, but there were no close DNA matches. The closest seemed to be 4th-6th cousins. We had hit a dead end for the moment.
3. The Big Break
Fast forward to July 27, 2019, just a day after my birthday. I received a notification from Ancestry that I had a new DNA match. This one was a much closer relationship: a 2nd cousin!
At this point, I was at a crossroads. Do I go ahead with this? I had said that I wasn’t that interested in knowing about my birth parents, but now a chance actually presented itself. If I went forward, it would kind of feel like cheating on my dad. It would kind of be acknowledging that I have another dad, or father, rather, and not just him. On the other hand, there’s a chance that this lead wouldn’t go anywhere, and that wouldn’t be so bad if I just looked and nothing came of it, right? I decided to check it out without telling my dad anything.
For the rest of this story, I’m going to use just first names and a lot of initials for privacy’s sake and will have to use 4 letters in some cases because that’s how close the names are.
I logged in and saw the following matches.
- Jessie, 1st – 2nd cousin, tree unavailable
- Glen, 1st – 2nd cousin, no trees
- Shannon, 2nd – 3rd cousin, unlinked private tree
- Craig, 3rd – 4th cousin, private tree
- James, 3rd – 4th cousin, unlinked tree
- Colleen, 3rd – 4th cousin, public tree
- Shelley, 3rd – 4th cousin, no trees
- Madison, 3rd – 4th cousin, public tree
- Patricia, 3rd – 4th cousin, unlinked tree
Here, an “unlinked tree” just means that the root person is not linked to any DNA results. I sent a message using Ancestry notifications to Jessie, Glen, and Shannon on July 29:
I am adopted and am looking for my biological parents. I was born on July 26, 1964 in Anaheim, CA. Since Ancestry says we’re first or second cousins, I thought that you might be able to help out. Do you know of any stories in your family relating to this? My mom lived in Canada for a while before having me.
Jessie was the only one who responded, so I started a conversation with her and it went something like this over the next couple of months:
Jessie: By looking at our shared matches I think you are related to my mother by her dad. I will ask her and see if she knows anything!
Jessie: I talked to my mother. She thinks she has an idea but is being secretive about it . She has ordered a DNA test to see if she is related to you or if it’s through my dad’s side.
Jessie: My mother did the DNA test and she is your cousin (Carolyn). My mother was adopted, and her biological father is RKDS – and he has a sister, ETAS, who lived in Canada but now lives in California. We have never heard anything about an adopted child from her though. That being said, my mother isn’t very close with her biological family. ETAS lives in xxx, California now. I hope this helped!
This was slightly scary. Not only did I get a response from Jessie, but I ended up with a really good lead to my biological mother, right from the start! This was not what I had expected at all. I really didn’t have a choice except to keep going forward.
Except…now I had something to work with. I could use this to research information and compare it to the CHS report. I did a web search for RKDS and ETAS and easily found two very important items: the obituaries of their parents, KRHS (father) and JTR (mother). Those were a treasure trove of information: KRHS’s and JTR’s dates of birth and death, where they were born, the names of two more of their sons: AS and KVS, and all their spouses’ names, who had predeceased them. In addition, there was the interesting fact that KRHS won first prize when he entered his art work in a fair. JTR’s obituary gave a bit more, including the names of grandchildren and the names of the mothers of the grandchildren, which indicated that there were divorces or deaths of spouses and then remarriages. Their family now looked like this:
- KRHS (father) and JTR (mother)
- son RKDS (Carolyn’s father)
- daughter ETAS (possibly my mother)
- son AS
- son KVS
The question now was how well did this match with the CHS report for which I paid $100 for five years ago. I searched for that report…and couldn’t find it. I looked for it everywhere because I was dreading having to pay for it again. Finally, though, I sent an email to CHS asking if I could get a reprint of it, and they sent one back, free of charge. Whew! The comparison between the CHS report and what I had found on the web was very positive:
- ETAS’s age was correct
- ETAS’s ethnic background was correct
- ETAS’s birth country was correct
- KRHS’s age was correct
- KRHS’s ethnic background was correct
- KRHS’s artistic penchant was correct
- JTR’s age was correct
- JTR’s ethnic background was correct
- ETAS’s number of brothers was correct
With all those points matching up, I was fairly well convinced that ETAS was my birth mother. This was now turning into a puzzle, and I love puzzles. I can be tenacious about digging into a problem that I really like. It was time for me to fill in the family tree. How many other relatives could I find? How many DNA matches on Ancestry could I link up? If I linked them up, would it match the relationship that Ancestry said it was, like 2nd cousin to 2nd cousin? So I used all of Ancestry’s “hints” to find connections. I subscribed to newspaperarchive.com and newspapers.com to search through them. It turns out the Winnipeg Free Press, through newpaperarchive.com, turned up a lot of information. I found a lot of information about direct relatives. I found that ETAS had either divorced her husband or he had died because she remarried to RDF and then they had some children. Was RDF my birth father? Did ETAS, after her divorce, marry her true love? I found ancestry information about the spouses of my relatives and started to follow that for a bit, realizing after a while that, while fun, it wasn’t really useful in finding my blood relations. I then had the idea to look for my relatives on Facebook. If I could find them, I could possibly connect a picture to a name. It turns out that I was able to find many of them, and they had public profiles, with public pictures, and a public friends list. I was able to use their friends list to verify that they were friends with other known family members, thereby confirming that I was looking at the right person. It also helped me fill in some missing first names. I then copied one of their profile pictures to Ancestry and also recorded their Facebook page URL in Ancestry as well, in case I needed to go back for anything.
I have a friend whose last name is Grbic and he mentioned how his name got anglicized by adding another letter to that. Carolyn has a similar last name, so with the hint from my friend’s name, I looked for the non-anglicized version of her last name and was able to find when her adopted family changed their last name and from that was able to find the rest of her adopted family plus her husband’s name (father of Jessie). It’s really kind of scary how much information is out there.
In the end, though, there was only so far back I could go because I had information on my grandparents but not their parents. But, I went out as wide as I could to find my maternal 1st and 2nd cousins. There were still a lot of DNA matches on Ancestry, so I assumed those would be on my birth father’s side. One of those, Glen, was a 1st or 2nd cousin and was the closest one on my father’s side. I wasn’t sure how to move forward with that.
I had been debating with myself on whether I wanted to pay one of those background person search companies to find out some more information. I finally did and was glad. I paid for a report on ETAS and another report on her husband, RDF. One nugget of information turned out to be the last name of the guy that ETAS was married to and was separated from when she was with my birth father. The other was a set of addresses, one of which matched the city that Jessie initially told me that ETAS was living in. I then wrote a letter, and then asked my wife to read it over, which basically said
Hello, I’m Gary and was born on this date in this city and I think you’re my birth mother. This is a one-time letter in case you don’t want to go forward with this. I’m doing fine and here’s a summary of my life so far. Here’s how I found you and here’s a few questions for you. Hope you’re doing well and I know the reasons that you gave me up for adoption, and they are completely understandable. I am in no way angry or disappointed in you.
I included my phone number as well.
I sent that letter on Oct 26, and of all the weird timing, my dad, George Kephart, had a stroke three days later, never fully recovered, and then died on November 26.
4. The Realization
After sending the letter, and also letting Jessie and Carolyn know that I had sent the letter, there was nothing to do but wait for a response.
I turned my focus to the paternal side of my family. I joined 23 & Me in Feb 2020 to hopefully increase my chances of finding something more, but they are more focused on medical issues and ancestral origins than genealogy. It did have six more completely different DNA matches. I decided to keep my focus on Ancestry.com. There were more DNA matches there, and some of them had done the next step and created family trees, with some of them being very well populated. I thought about how to use this information for a while and finally figured out how to do that. All I had to do was to use their trees as a starting point, go back a few generations and then do research to expand that generation forward to the present time. If someone was my 3rd cousin, we’d be related by one of our great great grandparents and I’d just have to fill in the gap from that great great grandparent to me. I only had 4 great grandparents and 8 great great grandparents on my father’s side, so the problem wasn’t insurmountable. My goal was to find a match to my paternal first cousin Glen and then find his uncle, who should be my birth father.
At first, it was easier to connect some of my DNA matches with each other than to connect them with me. Some of them were 3rd cousins with each other. I was just using the family trees that were already created, some of which were created by my DNA matches and some by other members. I was not looking at the primary sources that were available, assuming that for the most part the work done by others was trustworthy. That turned out to be mostly true. There was an interesting crossover between 23 & Me and Ancestry. I had two DNA matches (Alanna and Madison), one from each site, that were second cousins once removed to me, but were first cousins to each other. There were some roadblocks, though. Some of my female DNA matches were using their married name on their account. Perfectly reasonable, but it was a hindrance for me because I had to deduce what their birth name was. Secondly, Ancestry.com does not display information about people marked as still living. Also very reasonable, but frustrating when you’re trying to make a match with a living person. Thirdly, I tried contacting my DNA matches through Ancestry’s messaging so that they would grant me access to their private family trees, but most did not respond. I think what happened is many people signed up for an account, tried it for a month or so, and just gave up on it.
The paternal tree started to take shape. The GGG GP family names were Lynch, Cronin, O’Reilly, Hogan and Brady from Ireland, Simmons, Neane, Chilton and Smith from England and Jackson from Scotland, with Jackson and Simmons being the dominate ones. There was a point where a Jackson married a Simmons, but the results for the newer generation didn’t match up. There seemed to be some conflicting names. The Simmons was either Maude Ethel Simmons, 1879 – 1911, or Emily Maud Simmons, 1876 – ?. It really seemed like they were two distinct individuals even though the various family trees mixed their usage. I tried Maude Ethel first, because that seemed more solid, but could not make the link to some 3rd cousins. I finally gave up on that and used Emily Maud and bingo!, the pieces fell into place. I now had most of the close DNA matches linked up with each other, but still no lead to Glen. I could tell, though, based on the links to other DNA matches, where the link to my birth father should be. There just weren’t enough children listed from some parents. It was about like Mendelev predicting Gallium; the hole in the pattern was visible. I finally had to go back and look closer at the family trees I already used and also start looking at the primary sources. I focused on OHJ, who was at the grandmother/grand-aunt level. Hopefully, she would turn out to be my grandmother and have three daughters and a son, matching what the CHS report said. She married someone named DM, whose father was also named DM. It was really difficult to find her children. They should have been listed in the Winnipeg Free Press like the others. And why couldn’t I find her obituary, where her children’s names should be listed?
I finally found the obituary of one of her daughters, JDM. She married DG in 1948, and there it was. Her husband’s last name was the same as Glen’s. JDM had to be Glen’s mother. I needed JDM’s brother’s name, if it existed, but it wasn’t in the obituary. It did have this: “J was recently predeceased by her dear sister, AHM.” I looked up AHM’s obituary and found this: “Beloved sister of JDM and predeceased by brother D.” Damn it! I find out my birth father’s name and also that he’s already deceased at the same time. It wasn’t an exact match, though, because the CHS report stated that “Your birth father had three sisters ranging in age from ’15 — 20 yrs. older.'” and I had only found two sisters. My birth father was born around 1937 and JDM was born in 1927, which is only 10 years older and AHM was born in 1924, which is only 13 years older.
I did end up getting in contact on March 10 with an Ancestry member who was owner of a family tree that included Glen. Their response to my inquiry was “Yes you can have access to my family tree information. My Aunt JDM and my Uncle DM were married and lived in Ontario. I am in close connection still with Glen and (his brother) SG.” I asked them if they could give my email address to Glen. No response so far.
On February 9, I decided to look on Facebook for more information. I went to AS (ETAS’s brother) page and looked at his photos (as a hobby he’s a photographer). Lo and behold, there was a picture of AS and ETAS with their spouses in Big Bear, CA, taken the previous month. For the first time, I had a picture of my birth mother. Granted, it was a bit far away so that I couldn’t see any details, but still, I had that. What’s funny is that only weeks later at most, my family and I were in Big Bear on Super Bowl weekend.
On February 18, work sent out their first email regarding COVID-19. This one stated that they’re monitoring their suppliers, but right now, the supply chain was intact. On February 28, my company had stopped all non-essential international travel.
On Sunday, March 8, I received an email with the subject of “relative from Canada” from DS. He stated that he was a brother to Carolyn and therefore uncle to Jessie and also my cousin. He and Carolyn are both adopted (I knew that about Carolyn), however Carolyn always knew she was adopted while DS did not. He told me the story about how he found out that he was adopted and gave me his phone number. This was pretty good! Another direct contact with a blood relative. I forwarded the email to Laura and she was happy to see it as well. I was on a weeklong business trip to Austin that started that day, so I decided to wait until I got back on Friday, March 13 and could focus on giving a good response. When I did respond, I told him that I had a spot for someone named DKRS, and was that him (it was).
On Wednesday, March 11 non-essential visitors were no longer allowed in our buildings at work.
On Monday, March 16, I stepped away from my desk at work to talk to a co-worker. When I got back, I saw I had a voicemail from an unknown number. This was the message:
“Hello, this is ETAS, and I am interested in talking to you and giving you all the information that you would like, but I’m very occupied right now with the current problems we have in this area and I’ve been ill at the same time. So, I’d like to call you back in a month or so and get back to you. Thank you. Bye”
When she said her name, a shock went through my system. It was really her! My birth mother called me back! When I got back home, I played the voicemail for Laura, without telling her what it was. She got the same shock. Now we wait, and maybe send a Get Well card.
On Wednesday, March 18, work sent out an email stating that if we could work from home, then we should, starting the next day. I had a second business trip to Austin planned for March 30 through April 3, but that got cancelled.
On March 23, I got a call from DS, sort of. Apparently, he butt-dialed me. I had forgotten something at work that I needed in order to work from home better, so I was driving at the time. I texted him later, which turned into a 70 minute phone call. He and I are going to get along great. He had met the family around the year 2000 or so and gave me his impression of them all. He had a chance to talk with family members who have since passed away. I’ll leave the rest of the details out of this. I’m going to have to make a trip to Canada at some point, probably next year, after all this coronavirus pandemic settles down.
5. The Conversation
On Friday, April 3 at 2:30 PM, I got a call from my birth mother. I was working on something, but when I saw it was her, I just had to stop and take the call. It’s my birth mother and I was about to speak to her for the first time. The call confirmed some stuff that DS told me about, plus added some new light to some things. Her mother was schizophrenic and an alcoholic and abused her as a child. In general, she did not have a happy childhood. She married her first husband when she was 20. She had trouble remembering his name and I asked if I could guess and gave her the name that I had dug up. It was the correct one. She was wondering why I needed any info from her if I knew the answers already. I answered that I wasn’t sure about my answers plus those raw facts answer questions like who, what and where, but they don’t answer why. Like why did her and her husband move down from Canada to Southern California with their two year old daughter? It turns out that her first husband and his friends, and my birth father, decided to try to strike it rich in California. It should be noted here that my birth mother found it odd back then that my birth father was hanging with the others since he was from a town that was 85 miles away. Anyways, the plan was that the husbands would move down to Southern California, get jobs and then buy houses. It turns out that my birth mother’s husband was a slacker and needed nudging to get those two things done. Finally, though, they all moved to California, with my birth mother arriving with her two year old daughter.
I had been having problems finding the name of that daughter (my half sister). So I asked my birth mother about her as well as the status of the children she had with her second husband. According to her mother’s obituary, she had three sons by her second husband, or so I thought. One of those three was “Troy” and that was actually the name of her daughter by her first husband. It turns out that her husband wanted a boy and wanted to name him Troy. When the child turned out to be a girl, they made a bargain to name her “Diane Troy”, but call her Troy.
At some point for some reason, my birth mother and her husband separated and my birth father and his wife separated. I don’t know the details and may never know the whys and whens. I don’t know when my birth father did this, except I’m pretty sure it was after they all were in California, but he eventually gave my birth mother a call. I’m not sure why he called, either, with both of them being married. But that started off a temporary relationship and I’m not sure how long it lasted, except that, as the CHS report stated, they broke up and then my birth mother found out that she was pregnant with me. This part will probably remain a mystery to me, as it seemed to be bad memories for my birth mother and I didn’t want to pressure her and possibly ruin whatever relationship we were developing. She knew that I was going to ask who my birth father was, but like her first husband, she was having problems remembering who it was. Again, I volunteered a name, and after a few seconds pause, she agreed that that was my birth father.
Lastly, I asked permission to contact my new uncles and cousins. She asked me to wait until she had talked to her husband and brothers. I agreed, although I really wanted to make those connections, because I really didn’t want to cause any problems with my birth mother. I was content on doing this on her own schedule.
6. The Missing Link
I had been keeping my sister (also adopted, but from a different family. And not on Facebook) updated on the search for information about my birth father. I told her I had hit a dead end. No marriage announcement or obit or anything else about him or about his mother (OHJ) or father (DM). On April 17, she emailed me a link to an obit that she had found online. Apparently, she had done a similar search that I had done, but had persevered through a few more pages of search results and found an obit in the OC Register. I read it and it matched everything that I had gathered, plus the names of his wife and kids and grandkids and the year that he died (2008). This was amazing. I thanked my sister profusely. This was exactly what I needed. I decided to look them up on Facebook and I found them and decided to contact them. This was going to be a different conversation than the one I had with my birth mother. At least my birth mother was still alive. This time, I can only contact the children of my birth father. They won’t have any direct knowledge of my birth mother, so I have to present the clues that I have and see if they say that they match with reality. I picked the one (my half-sister) that seemed to be updating Facebook the most recently and sent her a Facebook message on April 17.
Me: I have a strange and delicate question to ask you. I think we may be related. Were your parents separated for a little while in the early 60’s?
She responded the next morning and we had a conversation.
Her: Yes they were separated for good in the 60’s. How do you think we are related?
Me: I might be your half brother. Did he have two sisters named Audrey and Jean? Was he about 5’11” and had curly blond hair when he was younger? Blue eyes?
Her: Yes. What leads you to believe this?
Me: Hmm, well, that’s the start of a long conversation. I’ll try to give you a short summary. I was born on July 26, 1964 in Anaheim, CA and put up for adoption. I also have a sister who was adopted from another family. Recently, I asked for and received a “non-identifying background report” from my adoption agency. No people names, no city names. It gave a high level description of my birth parents and their families plus the relationship my birth parents had. I then signed up with Ancestry.com and the DNA test. I ended up having 3 people who were 1st or 2nd cousins. I contacted two and that lead to finding my birth mother. I sent her a letter introducing myself. While waiting for a response, I used Ancestry.com to build a family tree on my birth father’s side. The one 1st-2nd cousin who was not on my mother’s side was Glen. I managed to complete the tree and make the family connection to him and that led me to “DM” but all I had was a name. Then I had a phone call with my birth mother and she confirmed the name. Then my sister found a link to your father’s obit in the OC Register, and it fit the pattern. So I decided to see if I could find you on Facebook. And here we are.
Me: I can send you the pertinent parts of the adoption agency report, if you’d like.
Her: This is too much for a conversation this way. I am more than happy to fill you in and send you pictures. I don’t think my father knew about you. He was very open. Do you know if he knew about you? You have his eyes and the family look. He was Canadian. You also have a half brother, my brother, who lives in Texas
Me: He never knew I existed
Me: Want to have a phone call? My wife and I are going to get some lunch real soon, but I’d have time after that.
Her: Ok it will be easier to talk on a land line. You can call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx anytime after 5. Geez, just went i was getting bored to tears self isolating
We talk about her (our) dad and some other stuff. Turns out he had a bit of wanderlust in him and never really settled down. The wife that I thought I saw in the obit was actually a girlfriend that traveled around with him. He liked fishing, also. The obit stated that he was buried at sea off of Newport Beach. My half-sister wondered if there was anything else I was looking for. I told her that for now, simply getting in contact with someone on my father’s side was a huge success. We swapped email addresses and I’ll send her some questions later. I also connected up with a niece, and we chatted a bit on Facebook as well and I plan on contacting others on Facebook as well as soon as I get the go-ahead from my birth mother.
They live up in Ontario, Canada. Same area as my birth mother’s family, not surprisingly. I’m really going to have to visit up there next year or so and meet everyone.
So there you have it. I’ve made contact with my birth mother and am waiting for her to say it’s ok to contact the others on her side, and am contacting my relations on my father’s side. I’m going to be sending a 2-3 page photo album as a summary of my life to them. Beyond that, it’s about filling in details in Ancestry and getting some photos and some stories, maybe, and scheduling some meetings after that. Would those be considered reunions? We never met, so that doesn’t sound quite right.
I’m really happy and surprised that this went as easily as it did. I could have run into so many problems.
Oh, and know this. That Norman Rockwell idea of a perfect family? It never existed. Every family is messed up a bit. Some more than others. Don’t be ashamed by anything that’s happened in your family because you can bet it’s happened to far more than just one other family out there somewhere.
It’s life. We’re humans. It’s to be expected.
