Success Stories

Just over a year ago I signed up for Genes to expand the English part of our tree. I put my mother's maiden name down and one match came up. A lady a few years older than me, and living on the other side of the world said that we shared the same mother's maiden name. Just a coincidence of course. I said I would help her find her family, because we seemed to "click" straight away. My brother also started to write to her because he wanted to help her cause. Our new pen pal had been adopted at the end of the war and had always wondered if she had any siblings. I asked my mother if she knew of another person with the same name, or whether any of her cousins had been forced to give up a baby. "No " was the answer. I asked my pen pal for a photo to show the family, really just trying to be kind. What she sent us blew our socks off. She looked exactly like my mum, and even more like my younger sister. I asked my mum again, and further denial. I researched all the birth indexes for every country I could, and my mother was the only person with that name for about 30 years. Mum had married Dad in 1947, and no mention of previous boyfriends. We were a family of 2 boys and 2 girls. The probability of our new pen pal being a half sister was gathering momentum, so to put the matter to rest, we had a mitochondrial test. We were tested for the same maternal line, which would mean we were either sisters or cousins and then it came back a perfect match. A further test proved we were half siblings. It took me three months of sleepless nights to tell my (our) mother what I had done. I told mum I had booked a holiday and that I was going to England to see my "new" sister. I had a fabulous holiday meeting my beautiful sister and her family, and brought back many photo's for mum to see. We had to look at them in secret because mum had never told dad about her first baby. Two weeks after seeing the photo's, mum passed away suddenly. She never got to meet her first baby daughter or family, but at least she can rest in peace knowing that she'd had a good life. Our family has lost their mother but in return we have a "new" sister, and her children and grandchildren. Thanks Genes Reunited. Oh and by the way, my new sister was only on a 2 week trial for Genes. We live in Australia and our sister lives in Scotland. We would never have bumped into each other.