So you want to find your biological family?

Maybe you grew up with your biological family and you just want to know more about where they came from before they settled in the States. Maybe you were adopted and want to know more about your biological history. Maybe you never knew who one of your biological parents was because of an unusual circumstance. Whatever the reason, you want to know more about your family’s past and direct to consumer DNA testing can help to sort out fact from fiction. Please understand that when you undertake genetic testing you may find out things that are surprising or even upsetting to you or other people in your family. There’s a saying among the genetic genealogy community - “People lie, DNA doesn’t”. If you aren’t ready to confront possibly uncomfortable truths, direct to consumer DNA testing probably isn’t for you. But that being said, if you are ready to take the plunge and get some answers, here’s a step by step guide to how to begin to unravel your results.

1. Decide which company to test with.

There are several companies available for genetic testing for ancestry in the States. The largest three are Ancestry.com, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage. If money is no object, I would recommend testing with all companies as they each approach ethnicity calculations a bit differently. However, if you are looking to match with previously unknown relatives and you have a small budget, Ancestry, by far, has the largest database. CeCe Moore runs a volunteer genetic genealogy group on Facebook called DNA Detectives and the group there has created a handy flowchart to help people navigate the decision-making process. I also made a slide presentation for my students last December to go over this process too.

2. Test and then upload your results to other sites to maximize matches.

Even if you only have enough money to order one DNA test, you can get the most bang for your buck by uploading your raw data to sites like GEDMatch, MyHeritage and FTDNA. You should never assume that your genetic relatives will definitely have chosen the same company to test that you have or that everyone who does DTC testing is aware of all these databases. So don’t get discouraged if it takes a while to find really useful matches. GEDMatch is a database that was created so that users who had tested across the different platforms could find genetic matches even if they didn’t use the same company to test. Plenty of other folks have raised concerns about the use of these databases by law enforcement to identify suspects or victims in cold cases so I won’t get into that here, but suffice it to say that all of these companies give you the option to prevent law enforcement from using your data. 

3. Interpret your results.

This is the hardest part of the process if you are a genealogy newbie. First of all, please understand that all companies attempt to estimate the relationship between individuals in their databases by saying things like second cousin or third cousin. Many people don’t understand the terminology that genealogists use so that alone is confusing. Then on top of that, those estimates are often missing nuance that would actually help you figure out the relationship between you and your unknown matches. So to begin - let’s look at how to determine relationships.

Most people know that their first cousins are the children of their parents’ siblings. First cousins share a set of grandparents. People tend to get confused when they hear things like “second cousin twice removed”. When someone says removed, they are talking about differences in generations between the original person being studied (you) and their relative. So for example, the children of my first cousins are my first cousins once removed because I am the same generation as their parents. My cousins’ children are my children’s second cousins because they share a set of great grandparents. But don’t get too worried about this terminology just yet…

To sort out the genetic relationship between two people the most important thing to know is how much DNA they share. Humans typically* all have a total of 46 chromosomes or 23 pairs of large DNA segments. (*I say typically because some people have extra chromosomes as in the case of folks with Down syndrome.) We each inherit one set of 22 autosomes or non-sex determining chromsomes from each parent as well as one sex chromosome (X or Y) from each parent. Males get their X chromosome from their mothers and Y chromosomes from their father, while females inherit an X chromosome from each parent. Scientists measure DNA segments using a unit called centimorgans (cM), named for a famous fruit fly geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan. The total amount of DNA you have among all 46 of your chromosomes is about 7400 cM. Since you inherited half your chromosomes from each parent, you will have about 3700 cM in common with them. The reason I say “about” is because sometimes the DTC labs don’t get complete coverage of the SNPs across your chromosomes so it may appear that you share a little less DNA. Thankfully, a lot of very smart people have been analyzing the data from DTC genetic testing over the past 10 years or so and there are several charts and tools to help you better understand the probability of a relationship between you and a newly discovered relative. I strongly encourage people to use the cM tool on DNA Painter.

The more closely related two individuals are, the more DNA they will share. Most folks don’t get lucky enough to find a lot of super close genetic matches right off the bat, but that’s OK. Remember that each person has 8 great grandparents and 16 great-great grandparents. If you know what you are doing, matches in the second and third cousin range - people who share those great or great-great grandparents with you - can answer most questions. 

Now that you have some background knowledge, here’s where the real work of sorting out relatives can begin. It’s important to figure out what matches you have in common with your newly discovered relatives so that you can figure out who your shared common ancestor was. Genealogist Dana Leeds developed a simple visualization method using an Excel spreadsheet a few years ago - now called the Leeds method. You can use the same approach to compare matches across platforms or try out some of the online tools that have been developed to help cluster matches for you (Cluster Mapper or CLM).

4. Build a tree.

You will need a place to keep your research organized. Digital family trees are the way to go. I use Ancestry.com to house my tree (which has over 14k people in it after more than 20 years of research), but that’s not free. You can also set up free family trees and search a ton of records on FamilySearch, the genealogy site created by the Mormon church. MyHeritage also hosts family trees. If you have money but don’t have the time or energy to develop the tree yourself, you could look into hiring a genealogist to do it for you. There are quite a few helpful tutorials available on YouTube to give you an idea of how to start building trees incorporating your genetic matches (Building Quick & Dirty Trees to Identify Genetic Matches, How to Create a Floating Tree and Merge Duplicates on Ancestry.com, Next Steps For Using DNA to Find Unknown Ancestors or Parents of Adoptees).

5. Don’t get discouraged.

It takes a lot of time and effort to sort out some family mysteries. Sometimes you just don’t have enough decent matches to answer the question you have. Other times, you may find that people don’t want to talk to you about their family or your shared ancestor - especially if it means uncovering an affair that resulted in a child. When in doubt, ask someone with more experience to check your work. Be patient and stay positive. You may not get the answers today, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have them down the road. Best of luck to you and happy hunting!

Old School Genealogy - Finding the McCarthy Clan

Back in 1994-1995, my paternal grandfather John "Jack" Rothrock Philipps revealed to me that his mother had him as a single parent in 1922. Great Grandmother Charlotte told him on her deathbed that his biological father was named Gilbert McCarthy, a married traveling salesman from Boston. She'd met him working as a maid in a residence hotel in Manhattan. She thought he was about 15 years her senior and knew that he had a brother named John who was an attorney. But that was all she knew to tell my grandfather. Pre-internet, he'd been unable to find out anything more about his biological father.

McCarthy Coat of Arms & Motto: Strong, Courageous and Swift

At that time, our family had one basic desktop computer that we all shared in our finished basement. I'd convinced my mother to get me a genealogy software program for it so I could start building a family tree. I'd also convinced my parents to get AOL dial-up service after playing with it at my best friend's house. The internet was like the Wild West back then - websites and chatrooms were rudimentary. Very few genealogical records were available online at that point. I spent about a year or so scouring the internet for genealogy message boards, reaching out to every McCarthy from Massachusetts that I could find.

Eventually, one woman wrote me back (I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember her full name) and told me that while she did not recognize a Gilbert or John McCarthy in her tree, she lived not far from Boston and often went to the state archives to pull records for her own tree and that she would be happy to try to find my Gilbert. A short while later, she emailed me back and said she thought she had found them. Because my great grandmother was born in 1894, we had guessed that Gilbert was born around 1880. She looked through all birth records between 1850 and 1910 for a Gilbert McCarthy. Amazingly, there was only one - Gilbert Joseph McCarthy, born October 11, 1875 in Orange Massachusetts. 

Orange as it would have looked in Gilbert's youth, map from 1883

Gilbert was listed as the son of Michael F. McCarthy (1830-1912) and Rosamond "Rosanna" Mary Monaghan (1844-1908). Michael and Rosanna were both born in England to Irish parents and emigrated to the US in the late 1850s or early 1860s. They met and married in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on October 2, 1864. Michael initially worked in mills around the state to support their growing family. Later, he became an iron molder. Gilbert was the fourth of nine children. Their oldest son John Francis McCarthy (1873-?) was only two years older than Gilbert and census records listed him as an attorney. So far there were two pieces of my great-grandmother's story that aligned with the paper trail.

The path of the McCarthy family around Massachusetts

Then my research helper floored me with another detail - she'd found Gilbert's death record as well. He had died on August 27, 1938, when my grandfather was just shy of 16. The cause of death was listed as tuberculosis and his last address was listed as Tewksbury Hospital (which now houses the country's first public health museum). His occupation on the death certificate was salesman and he had a wife named Marion. Every piece of the story matched perfectly. I thanked Ms. McCarthy and told my grandparents I wanted to meet with them in person to tell them something.

I believe this would have been around the spring of 1997 - we did not yet know that Grandpa had lung cancer at this point. He had not had the knee surgery that would reveal the cancer and my grandparents were still living independently in their house at 457 Knoll Road. I was in my first year of college so I drove myself to their house and we sat in the living room in front of the big bay window. I quickly relayed what our Massachusetts research angel had found. 

My grandparents' house on Knoll Road

My grandfather seemed relieved. "So he was already dead when we tried to find him? That makes me feel better about not finding him then. I'm glad to know a little more about him. I still wonder if he knew I existed though." Then he thanked me for giving him some answers. For those of you who didn't know my grandfather - a demanding, stoic man - this was a rarity, acknowledgment for a job well done. Later that year around July, we learned that Grandpa had a slow-growing lung tumor. We were told he had at most two years left, to get his affairs in order, maybe take a family trip... None of that happened though. He passed away about two months later on September 23, 1997. 

In the twenty-plus years since then, I have continued to research Gilbert and his family, never knowing for certain that he definitely was my great grandfather. When I was in grad school in CT in the early 2000s, I decided to take a weekend road trip to MA. I drove around Orange and ate dinner there. Then I visited Tewksbury Hospital, where a very kind docent pulled up Gilbert's hospital records (he was only there 2 weeks before he died) and took me out to the cemetery where we found his marker (a non-descript series of letters and numbers on a stake). She assured me that it was actually unusual for the graves to have a marker at all since the cemetery was not maintained for many years. Somewhere I have a picture of the marker that I took that day with a disposable camera.

As far as I can tell, Gilbert only had one other child than my grandfather - a daughter named Mildred, who was born prematurely in 1904 and died a few months later. The circumstances around her birth and death are also a bit mysterious - her mother is listed as two different people on the birth (Ella F. Moore) and death (Mary O'Brien) certificates just 4 months apart. I suspect her real mother was listed on the birth certificate but since she was young and not married to Gilbert, another name was used for the death certificate to hide the illegitimacy. 

My grandfather's older half-sister, Mildred McCarthy

I've also tracked the descendants of Gilbert's siblings in the hopes that one day we would have genetic confirmation of our link to the family. I sent my spit to 23andMe in 2013 and then paid to have my father's DNA analyzed there too. I uploaded our DNA to GEDmatch and waited patiently for a McCarthy descendant to match. Finally, about a year ago, we matched to a woman who is the great-granddaughter of Michael Leo McCarthy (1880-1961) - one of Gilbert's younger brothers. According to the tree I'd worked out, that makes her my father's second cousin 1 time removed (2C1R) and my third cousin (3C). The amount of DNA my father shares with her is within the normal guidelines of the number of centimorgans expected for a 2C1R. So yes, Gilbert Joseph McCarthy was definitely my grandfather's biological father.

More recently, I enjoyed finding articles on Newspapers.com from the turn of the last century when my great grandfather Gilbert was a young man about town in Boston. He was apparently an accomplished actor and singer on the amateur circuit, along with a couple of his brothers. 

Gilbert and brothers James and John were the leads in a play in June 1900.

The closest thing to a picture I've found of Gilbert!

So in the end, my grandfather was the son of two children of immigrants - English/Irish folks who came to the US in the mid to late 1800s looking for a better life. Grandpa always told me his mother's family was from the Cork area of Ireland and historical records show that Gilbert's father was from Cork. My DNA results do confirm ancestry from that region, as well as the Galway and Dublin areas. Before COVID hit, Rich and I were planning to take Griffin on a one week tour of southern Ireland to see all the places our ancestors had lived. Once we can be vaccinated, we will schedule the trip again. After all, we are...

Strong, Courageous and Swift