Things That Have Happened in the Last Year

I didn't realize it had been nearly a year since my last post.  Between then and now I've met my paternal half-brother Hans and his wife and young son.  I rejoined Facebook after a 2+ year hiatus, reconnecting me with my paternal half-sister Simone, the paternal first cousin once removed who orchestrated the Von Trapp family reunion, and my various maternal relations who I only ever communicate with on there.  Apparently no one was avoiding me; they just don't bother replying to emails.

No new half-siblings, leaving the donor conceived sibling count at zero.  No new word from my adoptive brother Dante or any other family.  I haven't heard from Dante since 2017 after I wired him our dad's life insurance payout.  I thought he might've friended our cousins on Facebook since he'd said when Dad died that he wanted to get back in touch with them, but the only thing I can see that he he has done on Facebook since then is join a group from our hometown, get into some internet fights with locals, get banned from the group, and then post that he has no idea why he was banned and they're all just too cliquey.  Now that's the Dante I remember.

No new word from my biological father.  No direct communication since he asked me not to contact him again after receiving my letter in 2014.

I can't remember if I wrote about discovering on Newspapers.com that my dad's father had another family and a well documented criminal record (thank you, Fresno Bee) before he moved back to the Midwest and married Grandma.  And thus my dad had a secret half-brother he may or may not have known about.  I emailed Dante about it but got no response.  The half-brother died a few years before my dad did and had no known biological children.  He had been named after my grandpa, but his stepfather had adopted him when he was little and given him a new surname.  I'd like to ask my dad's brother and sister if they knew about the secret half-brother, but I haven't seen my uncle since Dad's funeral or my aunt since my wedding over a decade ago.  I could probably count on my hands the number of times I've talked to them in my life, so reaching out for this would be more awkward than I'm willing to do.

My mom's suspected half-sister's daughter took a DNA test, confirming my grandpa was, in fact, her grandfather too.  I thought I'd written about my mom's secret half-sister/cousin, but I can't find it anywhere but here.  My cousin Michelle and I had started to doubt the veracity of the claim that Grandpa had fathered Ruby shortly before Ruby's mother had married his half-brother.  It was the big family "secret" all the cousins knew.  Ruby's daughter showed up as a first cousin match for me on 23andMe though, which is way too close a match for us to be half-second cousins (we share more than triple the DNA I share with my known half-second cousins on AncestryDNA -- the ones who should be her first cousins but aren't), so I know for sure now that we're actually half-first cousins.  We chatted on 23andMe a bit.  She asked after my (our) remaining uncle, Eugene, who neither of us has heard from in years.  I assume she knows as well as any of us who her grandfather is, but since I'd never talked to her or her mother (my half-aunt) before in my life and I don't know how their branch of the family feels about any of this, we never got onto the topic of biological grandfathers.  I wish I knew a polite and inoffensive way to say, "I've seen some wonky shit on here and I'm comfortable talking about anything you want to talk about.  You won't upend my world; I just don't want to upend yours either."

Tips for Keeping Your Sperm Donations Secret

Step 1:  STOP DOING IT!  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YOU'RE GOING TO GET CAUGHT!

A few months ago I crossed paths on Facebook with one of the many, many men who advertise online to donate their sperm to strangers.  He said he was married and had a daughter.  He said his wife knew he donates sperm and is okay with it but wants him to keep it discreet.  He used a very common fake name, as well as photographs of other people instead of his own.  He used a fake birthday, fake age, and fake place of employment.  He seemed to use his sperm donor user names exclusively on sperm donor websites.  This guy knew what he was doing.

He posted on a lot of sperm donor websites though, and little bits of information started to come out.  For one thing, he uses photos of himself with his daughter on some of the sites.  There are several photos – too many of them both to be stock photos -- and it seems like the people who had actually met him for sperm might say something if they weren’t him.  Reverse Google image search unfortunately yielded nothing. 

On another site he listed an actual small town name for his location instead of the local metropolitan area like he had on all the others.  Someone who had availed him of his services for “natural insemination” (sexual intercourse) gave him a glowing online review that called him by a different and presumably real first name.  Other ladies told him happy birthday on Facebook when his account said it was still months away. 

That’s still not a lot of information for a person to go on.  But apparently it’s enough for Google.  I had been entering everything I knew about him – first name, date of birth, town, user names – and it finally yielded the MyLife listing for someone with his first name, date of birth, and small town.  Maybe he used his sperm donor user names or email alongside his actual name too; I’m not sure.  I looked up the full name MyLife listed and suddenly I was looking at the man from the photos with his daughter.  Suddenly I was looking at his wedding announcement, his wife’s Facebook page, his Pinterest, his LinkedIn, his father’s YouTube page.  He had deleted most of his social media accounts that weren’t about donating sperm under fake names, but it didn’t matter.

I wonder if his wife really knows about his donations.  And if so, I wonder how she feels about it.  I wonder if his 5-year-old daughter knows about her half-siblings yet.  She already has seven according to the sperm donor profile with her sweet little girl face all over it. 

Stop Posting Secrets You Wish to Keep

If you aren’t telling your donor conceived child they are donor conceived, please consider not telling strangers on the internet either.  If you post – even in a private Facebook group -- are you posting under your own name?  If so, everyone in there knows who you are.  Anyone can look up who your children are and where you live and where you work and where your kids go to school.  A woman just posted in a private 5000 person (!) Facebook group a photo of her donor conceived son side by side with his half-sibling and stated that he is currently unaware the other boy is his brother.  He doesn't even know that he is donor conceived.  She plans to tell him but doesn’t know when.  I'm not sure what backstory she gave him for who his brother was and why they traveled 3000 miles to meet him.

A quick Google search later and I know her son’s full name, date of birth, home address, where he goes to school, and what grade he is in.  He's a minor with no social media accounts.  

Now, I’m not going to do anything with this information.  The only thing I would gain by contacting family members (whose contact information is all too easy to find) would be the ability to brag about how good I am at looking things up on the internet, which is clearly what I'm already doing here.  But PLEASE reconsider posting online about secrets you wish to keep.  I'm not the only person on the internet.  

Let’s say you’ve learned your lesson and have started posting under a pseudonym.  Did you keep the same Facebook account and just change how the name appears?  Are you posting under an alias or username you have used on other sites?  Is your account linked to an email address that is in your name?  Or to an email address that you’ve used on another account that is linked to your name?  If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then everything you post is being linked back to your name.  And not in a fancy only-NSA-and-Zuckerberg-will-know-who-I-am way but in a randos-can-look-me-up-on-pipl way.  The woman I mentioned above uses the same username for Facebook, Pinterest, TripAdvisor and travel forums, her defunct blog and Twitter accounts, and – drum roll please -- multiple donor/sibling websites.  

If her son ever does a Google search on his mother, the fact that he is donor conceived will be one of the first things he learns.  He is already nearly 13.

I’m really not sure what my goal is in writing this post.  I don’t actually want parents to get better at keeping secrets from their children.  I want them to realize that they CAN’T keep secrets from their children.  They suck at it.  Even if they don’t post about it online, they probably confided in someone.  Even in they didn’t, they might announce it themselves in a fit of something.  Or it’ll come out with a DNA test.  Please tell your kids who their biological parents are.  They’ll find out regardless, and it’s in their best interest for it to come from someone who has their best interests at heart.  And it's in your best interest for them to continue thinking they can trust you.  

[UPDATE] Cousin Planning the Family Reunion Reaches Out

I responded, and she responded, and then I responded, and she responded again, and SHE'S NICE.

So far Pam Von Trapp has offered to tell me family stories and talk to my paternal uncles for me since I mentioned not having had the guts to reach out to them.  I'm very happy with how this has gone so far. 

Thanks go to my BFF Jerry for helping me draft my initial response. 

Cousin Planning the Family Reunion Reaches Out

Two close relations from the Von Trapp family (my sperm donor biological father's family) recently joined AncestryDNA.  I recognized them from my half-brother Hans' Facebook.  One of them is the woman planning the big family reunion that I'm slightly desperate to be personally invited to, even though no one is being personally invited because EVERY VON TRAPP IS INVITED and I would also probably be too chicken to go.  I can't imagine I'd enjoy it.  I just want the story.  I also like the idea of laying claim to my biological father's unwanted extended family.

Anyway, the cousin planning the reunion sent me the following message on Ancestry tonight:

Hello! Youre one of my cousins, but Im not exactly sure which one!

Hello! I know you're one of my Uncle Jack's granddaughters, but I don't know if you're Joseph's daughter or Andy's daughter... I hope this isn't an intrusion, but I'd love to know who you are! Thanks so much.

Pam Von Trapp (daughter of Bob, Jack's younger brother)

I had been dreaming of such an opportunity.  Two of my three paternal uncles are already on AncestryDNA, and neither has ever reached out to me because they went to Joseph instead, which was reasonable but leaves me wondering if they avoid messaging me now out of respect for my privacy or because they want nothing to do with me.  I want to be in touch, but how would they respond?  I am too afraid to ask.

Pam is my first DNA match who knows Joseph and isn't in the loop on who I am.  How do I respond so that I neither cast myself as an immediate, permanent outsider nor offend her by assuming too much?  Is admitting I'm his daughter offensive?  He donated sperm anonymously! That doesn't make you his DAUGHTER!  People have strong feelings about the semantics of sperm donation and family.

I think I have to acknowledge that I'm donor conceived.  I can't tell if she's hinting she knows I'm someone new.  So much of the family doesn't communicate that she might not even know my half-sister Simone's name.  She might think I'm her.  I also want to make my introduction as little about Joseph as possible, though that makes it harder to word than "Joseph donated sperm while at medical school."  I want her to know that my half-siblings acknowledge me so she knows she wouldn't have to be some sort of trailblazer to speak to me too.  Joseph is the only person I've reached out to who has flat out rejected me, but I'm afraid it'll happen again.  I don't like being different.  I just want to be accepted.  This sounds really whiny, but it is what it is. 

tl;dr: I worry too much about things that don't really matter.  And I crave the love and acceptance of people I may or may not like were I to actually meet them.

Searching for a Published Family Tale

When I first DNA tested, when I started deducing the identity of my biological father, I found a man with whom I had so much in common I thought he might be my father.  Spoiler alert:  he isn't, but he did turn out to be my uncle.  I heard recently that he published something he wrote about his mentally unstable mother (so I think writing tell-alls about our mothers might be a genetically heritable trait?).  I hear it was deeply personal and possibly scathing, at least based on its family reception.  I want to find this piece of writing about my grandmother and the house where my father grew up, but I cannot. 

I don't know anyone who will tell me what it's titled or where or how it was published.  I don't know if it was a book or a magazine article or when it came out, but it was allegedly published.  My uncle is a prolific author who has published dozens of books and articles, but I can't find one that claims to be a memoir or a personal story.  His CV and his Google and Amazon author pages center on his career-related non-fiction writing, and none of them list everything.  None of them seem to list the articles at all.

I don't want to ask him personally partly because I don't think he'd tell me.  I have literally never contacted him, I'm not entirely sure he knows who I am, and I just don't like asking strangers for things when I can skulk about on the web hoping to uncover secrets myself instead.  My sister didn't know any helpful details and assured me our father wouldn't give up the information if she asked.  She feels sure he wouldn't want me to read it.  Any suggestions on where to find this story?  I'm betting it was an essay and not a full book... 

Update on the NPE in my Family Tree

I previously wrote about the wonkiness in my family tree.  It's looking more and more like my gg-grandfather was not, in fact, my biological gg-grandfather.  I currently have 26 DNA matches I can trace back to the same married couple in the Willis family.  Ancestry isn't aware of most of them because I drew up their trees myself.  I've made at least thirty of what I think people call "mirror trees."  My closest matches in this Willis family group share just over 100 cM of DNA with me.  Based on other cousins with whom I share the same amount of DNA as well as the extensive Willis family tree I've mocked up, I think the eldest match is my second cousin twice removed and the other two are my third cousins once removed.  This is all still estimation.

I've also discovered, as more close matches appeared, that there are genetic links between this massive group of Willis family members and Aida and my closest mystery cousin, the one who self-identifies as Cherokee but turned out to be 100% white lady.  All my mystery people are turning out to reside on the same mysterious branch of my family tree.  I guess this shouldn't surprise me since I have so many matches across most of the rest of my tree that I can often tell how I'm related to someone based solely on shared DNA matches.  (I have a LOT of matches.  I credit it to being so historically American and the DNA testing companies also being American.)

There is so much data it's hard to compile into one place where I can see it at a glance.  Today I started to draw the family tree on a wall-sized dry erase surface in the hopes of fitting all the DNA matches I know and then trying out places where my mystery cousins might fit.  It makes me look like a conspiracy theorist, or so I like to think.  I just need some red string and photographs.

I currently have one most likely suspect for the role of gg-grandfather based on proximity of DNA matches, though he isn't necessarily it.  My next step will be to figure out some currently living descendants who might someday DNA test and to hypothesize what their matches to other cousins should look like.  I think the match I'd most like to see would be one of my g-grandmother's descendants, any of whom should match to my entire mystery bunch as well as to the descendants of my gg-grandmother's clan in Illinois.

Something to consider for anyone who thinks they can keep a child's paternity a secret if they just wait out the clock:  the person I'm in the process of finding out isn't biologically my ancestor is 150 years my senior.  He died decades before my parents were born.  He fought in the Civil War.  

DNA testing is still in its infancy.  Who knows what DNA tests will be able to unearth in another 150 years.

If anyone has done genetic genealogy focusing on people this far removed from the current era and has advice or suggestions for what I should be doing next, please let me know.  It's hard since the margin of error increases -- snowballs, really -- each time you go back another generation.

I Found My Secret Half-Great-Aunt with DNA Testing

I mentioned in a post two years ago that my maternal grandfather was conceived out of wedlock.  His mother was between husbands, and his father got around.  I also mentioned that a much younger half-sibling had contacted my grandfather in the late '90s, but I never learned her name.  She lived far away, and my grandmother had said she would send her a copy of the only photo they had of my great-grandfather and the few she had of his other children, the legitimate offspring.  My half-great-aunt didn't know her father because she had been conceived during an extramarital affair.  Her mother and social father (stepfather doesn't seem accurate if they passed her off as his own) already had two other children.  My half-great-aunt would be about 70 now, barely older than my mother.  Well, I found her.  Or, more accurately, DNA testing found us both.

My half-great-aunt popped up on AncestryDNA the other day with just three people on her family tree -- herself and her biological parents -- and I immediately knew who she was.  Even without the family tree, the 450+ cM of shared DNA and the many DNA relatives in common made it clear that my great-grandfather was our closest common ancestor.  I messaged her explaining how we're related (cushioned with "I think") and that my grandfather was one of the children born after their father's wife died.  I was trying to put delicately that he was one of the outsiders like her, that almost everything I knew had come much later from my own research.  I wanted her to feel comfortable talking to me.  I wanted her to know I was an outsider too, albeit one with lots of collected data and photographs.

I asked if she'd been the half-sister whose named I'd never learned who had written to my grandfather in the '90s.  She wrote back right away, and she was welcoming.  She said she was probably the same sister.  The few details my grandmother had mentioned, like birth year and state of residence, matched up, and she said she had tried to reach out to her "father's people" back then.  She hadn't known her father, she said.  She'd only seen him once when she was little, and her mother was still married to someone else, so she hadn't been allowed to talk about him at all.  How strangely similar to being donor conceived.

Features I Want to See on AncestryDNA

I'm still trying to figure out the wonkiness in my family tree that I mentioned a few weeks ago.  I have it narrowed down to the right eighth of my family tree (based on deductive reasoning, since a significant number of DNA matches back up every other great-grandparent in my tree), possibly the right sixteenth (a gg-grandfather about whom I've found almost no information and whose wife has been backed up by more than one reasonably close DNA match).  I've found eight DNA matches so far who are descendants of the same mystery couple from the early 1800s.  They aren't on my family tree, but I think they are my ggg-grandparents.  I think one of their sons was secretly my gg-grandfather.  Ancestry would probably say the same thing if the family trees in question were linked to profiles and not just trees I'd drawn up myself from scratch.  Ancestry starts thinking it's suspicious when I have just three DNA matches whose trees overlap.

Here is some functionality I'd like to see on AncestryDNA that I think would make it a lot easier to solve my little mystery:

1)  In "Shared Matches," show me not just how much DNA I share with my matches but how much DNA those individuals share with each other.  23andMe recently implemented this feature in their "open sharing," and it would be super useful, if only more people participated in open sharing.

2) Allow me to search the DNA database by user name.  23andMe does this.  Or even just let me search my own matches by user name.  You can currently only search your AncestryDNA matches by searching for a surname from their family tree.  If you want to find someone who isn't a relatively close match and didn't link to a family tree, good luck finding them in your (in my case anyway) hundreds of pages of matches.

3) Allow me to search my DNA matches by not only surname from their tree but also by full name.  This would be very helpful when I'm trying to find people who have Joseph White in their tree and not just any random person named White.  Better yet, allow me the option of inserting their birth and death years too and/or locations, which is already what the Ancestry "shared ancestor hint" algorithm seems to function around.

4) Allow me to search my DNA matches by more than one surname.  23andMe does this.  Maybe I don't want to know literally everyone with Williams in their family tree.  Maybe I only want to know the ones whose trees contain both Williams AND Smith, regardless of whether those family lines intersect or not.  This feature would make it dramatically easier to find more DNA matches descended from that 1800s mystery couple of mine because I could search for his surname AND her maiden name.

I love AncestryDNA.  The fact that they allow users to link their family trees to their profiles makes it an easier service on which to find matches than on 23andMe or Family Tree DNA.  I can tell you how I'm related to over 200 of my DNA matches on Ancestry, largely for this reason.  HOWEVER, their search functionality is still the worst of the three of companies.

There's Something Wonky in My Family Tree

Warning:  This is long and might be completely uninteresting.  It's also hard to make it make sense without visual aids, so it might be nonsensical.

tl;dr:  I think my great-great-grandfather was either adopted or someone else altogether.

New Match
I got a new match on 23andMe not too long ago -- a 2nd to 4th cousin, the site said.  Since the user name said TJCapello*, it became my closest actionable (i.e., non-anonymous and as yet unsolved) match on the site.  I sent him the default "let's share DNA info and see how we're related" message, but -- as expected -- I didn't get an immediate response.  His profile was new and contained no additional information.

I looked up the initials and refreshingly uncommon surname and, taking into account that he was male, I found his full name and location online with a quick Google search.  I started drawing up a family tree for him based predominantly on his mother's obituary on Legacy.com (but also using pipl.com, Facebook, FamilySearch, and Ancestry), and I was delighted to learn three out of the four of his grandparents were Italian immigrants.  I have only trace amounts of Southern European DNA myself and a tree filled with British and German names, so I focused my tree-building efforts on the non-Italian quarter of his ancestry. 

Then I got another new DNA match, even closer this time -- a 2nd to 3rd cousin, it said.  I quickly learned it was my previous match's sister (different surname, but Google knows all).  Whatever my relationship to her is, it's the same one I share with him, so I figured I should be able to find our most recent common ancestors in the great-great-great-grandparent range or even closer (thank you, ISOGG).

I built out the English-sounding quarter of the Capellos' family tree until it should have intersected with my own.  It even featured the surname Willis* like my own tree, and they lived in the Midwest, not far from another branch of my own family tree.  But I couldn't find any overlap, despite my own Willis branch of the family tree tracing back to the 1600s. 

I put this project aside for awhile, and I come back to it every so often.  This wouldn't be an easy one to solve like I had thought.  Either their family tree contains an error -- perhaps from an adoption or a non-paternity event -- or mine does.  Or maybe that mysterious branch of my family tree that ought to lead back to New York where my great-great-grandfather was born really doesn't.   

The Wonkiness
Recently I've started finding other DNA matches, on Ancestry this time -- all in Ancestry's "4th to 6th cousins" range, which tends to be a very loose estimate -- whose trees overlap with that same Willis branch that doesn't fit into my own.  I've found upwards of five matches whose trees overlap in the same place, making them all second and third cousins of the Capellos, though Ancestry hasn't put it together into a "hint" for me yet because I sometimes have to draw up the family trees myself based on less detailed trees or user names alone.  I appear to share about half as much DNA with those Ancestry matches as I do with the Capellos, which leads me to believe my family tree intersects with the Capellos' a generation more recently than it intersects with the others'.  But that leaves me confused.  Looking at their family tree, that means I'm descended from a Willis born in the early to mid-1800s.  I already have all those slots in my family tree filled.  I don't know how they could fit into my own tree.

That said, I don't believe any ancestor on my family tree is necessarily the right one until I have at least a couple separate (non-sibling) matches whose combined DNA and family trees support my data.  The more distant the ancestor, the less possible s/he is to confirm.  The more distant the cousin, the less possible s/he is to confirm.  I'm in contact now with some cousins so distant that the relationship doesn't even show up in our DNA anymore, and I only feel confident of the relationship because of overlapping family trees and mutual DNA matches within those same family trees. 

Logicking It Out
Here's the deal with the Willis branch of the tree in question:  It shows up in several reasonably close DNA matches' trees, so I assume it is how I'm related to them.  It's possible I'm wrong, but it's unlikely.  In order to fit it into my own tree however, something currently in my tree must be wrong.  First, I know the Willises are connected to my maternal side because my paternal uncle on Ancestry shares zero of those matches with me.  I also have enough known DNA matches at this point to draw the conclusion that several specific ancestors on my tree must be accurate.  I can verify my mother is my mother, I can verify her parents are my grandparents, and I can verify my great-grandparents too.  I have enough reasonably close DNA matches backing up my data that I feel confident about six of my eight maternal great-great-grandparents.  I even have an Ancestry "hint" that aligns another more distant cousin with ancestors of one of the two remaining great-great-grandparents (I feel less certain because it's only one match and a distant one at that).  That would leave Jack, my great-great-grandfather who supposedly came from New York. 

Jack is the brick wall of the mystery branch of my family tree.  I have no DNA matches to support him, and many hours of research have yielded no indication of who his parents were, which makes it exceptionally hard to find DNA matches that would support him.  His wife, my great-great-grandmother Emily, was from rural Illinois, within a 45-minute drive of the Willises.  According to census records, she was twenty years younger than Jack and had their first child -- my great-grandmother -- when she was 28.  They'd supposedly married two years earlier, but I have not been able to find a marriage record, though I found one for her first marriage easily enough.  Lots of my ancestors crossed state lines to marry though, so I'm not even sure where to focus my search.  Could Jack have been my great-great-grandfather but actually been adopted?  I would think this more likely if he didn't claim to have grown up in New York, over a thousand miles from the family to which I'm trying to connect him.  I could be wrong, but I don't think adoptees were moved that far from their birth families in the 1850s.  Could my great-grandmother have been a non-paternity event (NPE), meaning Emily was impregnated by someone who wasn't Jack?  If that is the case, I'm still not sure who my great-great-grandfather would be.  There isn't one specific "most likely suspect" in the Willis family tree, either based on DNA or based on relative age and geographic proximity.

Next Steps
My closest DNA match on Ancestry whose tree contains the Willis line has several matches in common with me.  A few of them also contain the Willis line, but several don't have detailed trees, nor are they related to the entire cluster of other Willis descendants, though they are related to each other.  My next step is to build family trees for the ones who don't have them yet, or whose trees only have a couple of names, which is most of them.  My hypothesis is that the ones who aren't mutual DNA matches with the Willis cousins will be related via an adjacent family line -- perhaps the Thompsons.  Thompson was the maiden name of my closest Willis cousin's great-grandmother.  If I'm right and they're connected via an adjacent family line, it would tell me which generation connects me to that family tree -- the generation containing both the Willises and the Thompsons (or whichever adjacent family surname) rather than an earlier generation.

In case you're wondering why I would put so much effort into something that matters so little, please understand THIS IS MY FAVORITE KIND OF PUZZLE.  I have been waiting for something like this to happen ever since I solved the "who is my biological father?" puzzle, which was at most a 4-star difficulty on Dell Logic Puzzles' 5-star scale.  I find few things as gratifying as solving logic-based puzzles, and solving this one will create an even bigger hint toward solving other genealogical puzzles, of which there are two more I've been working on for months.  I've written about Aida, but there is another one I haven't even mentioned yet (she self-identifies as Cherokee, but her DNA is 99% European), and the solution to this Willis puzzle will help me towards solving both of them via deductive reasoning.  In short, I'm doing this for fun.

*Not his actual name.

My Piece on the AnonymousUs Podcast

I wrote a piece about my sister a couple of weeks ago for AnonymousUs.org (and posted it here too because I crave attention and recognition), and Hattie Hart did a very nice reading of it for their podcast this week.  Mine is the last of the three stories, starting at the 5:45 point.  (Thank you, Hattie!)

My Sister

My half-sister Simone texted me over the weekend and it got me thinking.  I wrote the following to submit to AnonymousUs:


When I first found my biological father and his family through DNA testing, I found my only known half-sister.  Our father told her about me at my request.  She was in shock.  "I always wanted a sister," she told me.  "I can't believe I've had one all this time and didn't even know."  I knew how she felt.  We'd both grown up with only brothers.      

My sister and I look a lot alike:  same pale skin, same hair, same eyes, same jaw.  We like a lot of the same things:  hiking, baking, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  We're both half German, though only she grew up learning the language, and only she feels a connection to the culture.  And there are even more things we don't have in common -- the way we dress, the books we read, the music we like.

We've never met.  I was in kindergarten when my sister was born and moved a thousand miles away.  It was another 25 years before we learned of each other's existence.  We've texted, Facebooked, talked on the phone -- tentative efforts to become "real sisters" like ones who've grown up together.  Her parents don't approve, but we're adults and it's out of their hands now.  My mother forbade me from ever seeking out my biological father's family too.  "He was just 'a donor,'" she told me.  "It's different."  Still, even if you believe family is only who you choose to include, my siblings and I have chosen to include one another.  As far as they're concerned, I count.  I feel like their opinions on this matter hold more weight than mine since they aren't donor conceived like me. 

Families aren't exclusively made up of intended parents and the children they choose to raise.  That's a family, sure, but sometimes children -- certainly donor conceived and adopted children -- have additional family beyond the ones who raised them.  Sometimes family means shared blood in two people who look alike but grew up apart.  Sometimes two strangers are family simply because they are sisters.  I don't think it's as "different" as my mother believed.

Genetic Counseling for the Donor Conceived

I'm getting to the point where I'm posting enough stuff my half-siblings know that, if they stumbled across this blog for whatever reason, they would be able to identify me.  This makes me nervous, but not nervous enough to stop posting.  Obviously.

My half-brother Hans emailed me the other day to say our uncle had tested positive for some sort of mutation that puts people at higher risk for specific types of cancer.  He said our father had asked him to let me know in case I wanted to get myself or my daughter tested.  Below Hans' note was a series of emails between my biological father and my uncle's wife.  She had the job of informing my uncle's family members that they might want to get tested.  There was a limited amount of information exchanged.  The emails were from several months ago, but the dates showed my biological father just had forwarded them to Hans to forward to me this week.  It reminded me vaguely of how people who find out they have an STD are supposed to reach out to everyone they've been intimate with.  "Hey, it's Joseph.  Yeah, the Joseph who sired you about 30 years ago.  Good times, huh?  So anyway, I tested positive, and it turns out you might want to get yourself tested too..."  I wish I had more known half-siblings, just to add to the comic effect.

I had a check up scheduled with my doctor for just a few days later, so I brought a print-out of the email chain to my appointment and asked my doctor what he thought of genetic testing.  I'd assumed he would say there wasn't much point in it if I'm not planning to have more kids and there is nothing actionable I can do with the results anyway.  When I'd brought up prenatal testing before conceiving my daughter, my OB/GYN at the time had said, "What for?  If you don't even know your family medical history, how can we know what tests to run?"  I hadn't known who my biological father was back then or anything about his family medical history, but I thought there were standard tests doctors could run for common disorders. 

To my surprise, maybe because I have more family information now, my current doctor had a different reaction.  He referred me to a local cancer center that does genetic counseling and strongly recommended I do it.  He said that, while there isn't often something actionable to be done with a heightened cancer risk, there might be more screening options in the future, and the field of genetics is progressing constantly so it would be good to have my results on file.

I called the genetic counselor to make an appointment.  She asked me if I had a copy of my uncle's report because there was relevant information in it that they could use in testing me.  I told her I might be able to get a copy.  She stressed the importance of it until I finally explained that my biological father was an anonymous sperm donor and I'm still a secret to most of his family, said uncle probably included.  I told her I would ask my brother for the report, but I wasn't sure I could get it.  She told me it was okay.  While it's useful information and would inform what genetic tests would be done on me and would probably make my testing cheaper, they can work without it. 

Then she asked me to compile a list of every  member of my extended family who has had cancer too, as well as which type of cancer and at what age it developed.  I know some of that.  I know what I know anyway.  I don't know when their various cancers developed, but I know they all died soon thereafter or as a result of the cancer, and I know when they died, so surely that counts for something.  My information isn't lacking enough that I would try to ask for more anyway.  Most of the cancer in my family is on my father's side.  All of the "lady cancers" are, and those are the ones whose risk are heightened the most dramatically by this particular gene mutation.

I told my brother thank you for the information and thank you when he got me the extra pages from our uncle's report.  He's always very prompt in his replies.  I didn't mention that I already have heightened risk for colon cancer, which I inherited from our father's genes, in spite of our father pointing out in the email chain that he thinks he got "the good genes" because he hasn't yet had the same colon issues his brother or mother have had.  I'm not going to tell any of them the results of my genetics testing either, both because I don't think they want to know and also because I want to have information they don't have for a change.  I'm not mad at my half-siblings.  They are nice and kind to me, but I'm angry at my father every time I remember he exists, not just for this.  I get so angry when I think of him that I often cry in impotent rage, and I don't want anyone in his family to know that.  I want them to think I'm calmer and cooler than them, as I've always pretended to be.  I do not want them thinking I'm irrational and ungrateful or expecting too much.  I will take what I can get.  I will take months' old forwarded emails indicating that my daughter and I might want to get ourselves checked out for new and exotic cancer risks, carefully funneled through a third party so that I don't dare take liberties with my father by responding to him directly.  I know I have more than most DC people already.  But I'm still angry.  

Bright Side:  At least it's not ALS.  I scoured my raw genome data from 23andMe, and I'm definitely not getting ALS.

The DAR and Cultural Identity

I have craved a cultural identity since I was a young child.  I relished movies about people with strong cultural ties, such as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Pocahontas" and I really want to think of a third one that isn't "Schindler's List" but every example I think of is more culturally insensitive than the last.  I grew up in a white, Midwestern town where our grasping at cultural identity was probably a large part of what led people to genealogy.  It's what led me to mine.

My interest in the Daughters of the American Revolution began when I thought I'd never know the identity of my biological father.  My social father's mother had been very interested in her own genealogy, and I have a framed family tree she drew that includes pencil sketches of a few generations of her ancestors.  They aren't my ancestors, but no one else in her family seemed to want it, and she's a talented artist.  It seemed less weird to have it hanging on my dining room wall when I thought it was the only paternal family I'd ever know. 

I decided to trace my dad's family tree on Ancestry.com since his mother had given me a decent start.  I remembered another family tree she had drawn up that traced her American ancestors back to the 1600s.  I thought maybe I could join the DAR.  If there was going to be institutionalized lying on my birth certificate, I wanted at least to be able to use it to gain entry to a club where I didn't belong.

In case you aren't aware, the DAR is an American group for ladies over the age of 18 who can trace their direct lineage to someone who aided America in the fight for independence.  By "trace," they mean you have to produce birth, marriage, and death certificates for everyone in your direct line back to the ancestor in question.  Most states didn't keep such records until about a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, so that can be a tricky feat.  Fortunately, if a more immediate ancestor is already a member of the DAR -- such as your mother or grandmother -- you only have to prove your lineage back to that person.  Very convenient for maintaining the status quo.  DNA evidence doesn't count as proof nor is it accepted, so no one really knows how many of the members actually descended from patriots biologically and not just legally, or how many meet the bloodline criteria but are excluded because of an ancestor being adopted or born out of wedlock.

I think my dad's mom tried to join the DAR at one point.  When I found a "patriot" in her tree and looked him up in the DAR's patriot database, there was a note explicitly stating that the there was no certifiable proof that the daughter from whom my grandmother descended was legally his child.   

Now that I've done more genealogical research on my own family tree, I've found I'm descended from at least half a dozen "patriots" on my maternal grandfather's side.  While I find a club based around purity of blood rather distasteful and assigning yourself value based on who you were born to rather sad (especially in my case), the DAR still sings its siren song for me.  I crave acceptance and belonging.  Also, "I'm off to my DAR meeting," is one of the WASPiest things a person can say, and I've striven to be WASPier since adolescence.

In case you aren't aware, a WASP is a White Anglo Saxon Protestant, but it has a connotation of snobby old money and power, which is what I find appealing about the term.  I was born white, of mostly British descent, and Methodist, so I'm a WASP in the most literal sense, but I was raised as White Trash.  It's a very different subculture.  We kept a totaled car in our driveway when I was growing up.  My brother has a gun collection.  My grandpa used the "n" word at Thanksgiving dinner.  I don't get jokes about "double-wide trailers" because my uncle lived in one and it was a hell of a lot nicer than the house where I grew up, not to mention TWICE AS WIDE as his previous trailer.  It's a very different subculture.

As I drew up my family tree over the last year, it seemed my DAR dreams would be quashed by the fact that my maternal grandfather was "illegitimate."  I had no idea what name he'd had at birth because his parents weren't married, and his siblings were all half-siblings with different surnames.  Every census since his birth had listed them all under a different surname -- that of whomever their mother had most recently married, even though there was never a man in the house come census time.  I couldn't find evidence my grandfather had even existed under his father's surname before he enlisted in the army for WWII, so I didn't know how to request a copy of his birth certificate. 

Then a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me to try.  I knew his birth date and his mother's maiden name and the city where he was born.  Maybe that would be enough.  I used the only legal name under which I knew him and included his father's name for good measure.  It worked.  It turns out Wilkes -- his father's last name -- was always his last name.  And his father's name was on his birth certificate too.  Where my grandfather and I come from (and maybe across America -- I'm not sure), the mother's husband is automatically the legal father, whether he is present for the birth or not.  If the mother is unmarried and no father is present to sign his name to the birth certificate, the father line unceremoniously reads "bastard."  I'm not sure if this is still how things are done, but it's how they were done when my grandpa was born in the 1920s.

My grandpa's father wasn't present for his birth.  I know this because the line of the birth certificate where it asks for his last known address reads, "Unknown -- Abandoned Wife."  Perhaps it's true.  Perhaps they were married, in spite of the fact that there is no marriage license registered for them in the county where they both lived or anywhere else I have looked and in spite of the fact that my grandmother's letters made it sound like they weren't.  (Or perhaps Michael is right and "Abandoned Wife" was the name of his hometown in Kentucky.)  But I think it's equally likely my great-grandmother didn't want to have "bastard" written on her son's birth certificate.  And I think that was a solid move on her part.  I have great respect for people willing to lie for a good cause, and in this case, my great-grandmother was able to convey more truth on her son's birth certificate than the word "bastard" ever would have.  

Unexpected Relatives

I found another second cousin today.  On Facebook.  On accident.  He had replied to a school friend's post, and his surname was familiar, so I asked where he was from and suggested we might be cousins.  Turns out our grandparents were siblings. 

One of the best things about second cousins is that they are distant enough relations that I can say who my paternal grandparents were and we can establish how we're related without raising any eyebrows.  I don't have to tell them my father's name or that he was an anonymous sperm donor.  People don't usually expect to know their second cousins, so we say "small world!" and laugh and move on.  I've done it before.

And as soon as I wrote that sentence, he messaged me, "Who is your dad?  My dad wants to know."

I didn't know what to say.  If I told him my father's name, it might get back to my uncle who still lives in the same town, and even though he knows who I am, I don't know how he feels about my existence or my advertising it.  If I said, "He was an anonymous sperm donor, but he doesn't like people to know, so keep it quiet," that would raise eyebrows and probably more interest.  It would also make me an interloper who doesn't belong in their family, at least in some people's eyes.  This is why I don't reach out to my first cousins or my uncles, even though they are the ones with the old photos and the family stories I want.  It would be awkward.  I would feel like a tattletale or even a liar, claiming the family of a father who won't claim me.  I didn't realize how much of a secret I was still keeping with his identity.  I have never kept his name secret from friends or advertised it publicly, but today was the first day someone who wasn't a friend asked for it.  Even on my Ancestry tree his name is private, and no one has ever asked for it.  Today was the first time I had to draw a line. 

I didn't respond to my second cousin.  Ignoring his question seems rude and I don't like doing it, but I don't know how to respond, so Jerry suggested I just never respond because it will do the least damage.  I'm on here posting everything I remember about my mother, but I'm still keeping my father's secret.  I feel nauseous. 

Why Doesn't Juliana Look Like Her Parents?

One of my fears leading up to my daughter's birth was that she would accidentally be switched in the hospital and I would only realize it after months or years, when I'd have to decide whether to continue raising the baby I knew or to trade her for my biological baby who grew in my womb.  That sounds like a terrifying sort of Sophie's Choice to me, and people like to make TV shows and movies about it, so I worried about it.  As far as I can tell, newborn babies look more like each other than they resemble their parents, so I spent the first few weeks of Eliza's life staring into her tiny alien face, looking for someone familiar.  Thankfully, after a few weeks, she started to resemble both my husband and myself, and my worries abated.  Sometimes people say, "She looks exactly like Michael," but people most often say, "She looks like a perfect blend of her mom and dad!" 

No one says that about Juliana.

Juliana was born the same year as Eliza.  She is the daughter of my college friends Julio and Isabella.  Julio and Isabella look a lot alike, with the same medium pink complexion and dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, so it came as a surprise to their Facebook friends (and probably their families, but I only see their exchanges on Facebook) when they started posting photos of the startlingly pale Juliana.  "She's beautiful, Julio!  Whose eyes are those?" people asked, referring to the bright blue color that never faded to brown.  "Love those golden curls!  Where did she get that hair?" they continue to post.  Julio doesn't acknowledge the questions except to occasionally post links to articles explaining how two brown-eyed people can have a blue-eyed child. 

He is right, of course.  Genetics is far more complex than our seventh grade science classes led us to believe.  It is entirely possible for two brown-eyed people to have a blue-eyed child.  Still, if there is one thing I've learned from being donor conceived, it's that children inherit features from their parents.  When they look nothing like one or both parents, there tends to be a reason.  And Juliana looks nothing like her parents. 

Here are all the possibilities that went through my head:

1) Maybe they used a sperm donor.  After all, Isabella has curly hair too, and Juliana smiles sort of like her.  They don't look particularly related, but that doesn't mean they aren't. 

2) An affair?  I don't believe this though.  I include it in the list because it's possible in the most literal sense of the word, but I give it a 0.5% likelihood tops.

3) Maybe Julio and Isabella used IVF and used gamete donors or "embryo adoption," or one of their gametes or the entire embryo got switched with someone else's.  I would put more weight behind this possibility if it had taken longer after their wedding for them to get pregnant.  I currently have no reason to believe they used IVF at all.

4) Maybe Juliana was switched with another baby at the hospital.  ::shudder::

5) Maybe a variety of mutations and long dormant traits have caused Juliana to look different from her parents, despite being their biological daughter.  She doesn't appear to have any sort of albinism, but something like that might at least explain the difference in coloring, though not the difference in her other features.

About a year and a half ago, Julio and Isabella announced that they were expecting their second child.  I waited anxiously to see what she would look like in a way I wouldn't admit to people I know in real life.  I wonder if anyone else was doing the same.  If she resembled Juliana, I felt I could rule out the "switched at birth" scenario, which I personally think is the most scary and upsetting.  If she looked like Juliana, either they were using a donor who was passing on a lot of physical characteristics, or they were somehow passing their long dormant traits along themselves.  Though I admit "long dormant traits" are something I stopped believing in when I found photos of my biological father.

Emilia was born a few months ago.  She is beautiful.  She has both her parents' dark brown hair and eyes.  Her face looks so much like a tiny, fat version of Julio's that it makes me laugh.  There is no question of who her parents are or where she inherited her features.  Juliana stands out more than ever now. 

As much as I wonder what the truth is behind how Juliana came to be Juliana, I hope she doesn't take a DNA test before she is eighteen because I feel 86% certain Julio and Isabella are not her biological parents, and I feel 75% sure they believe they are, in spite of any nagging thoughts that might linger at the backs of their minds, and nagging questions from oblivious and sometimes tactless friends on Facebook.  I am afraid there is another little girl who was born on or around the same day at that same hospital in Queens, who has beautiful dark brown eyes and hair and doesn't blend in with any of the strawberry blond, Irish-looking people in her family.  And I hope none of those parents have to come to terms with the realization that their biological daughter -- the one who inherited their looks and some of their personality and some of their mannerisms and intelligence -- is living in someone else's home and calling someone else "Mommy."  If there were such another little girl and they found out she existed, then all the parents involved would have to figure out what to do about that.  At eighteen, I feel like the girls will be grown and probably in college and able to associate with whomever they choose -- ideally all four of their parents.  It wouldn't make coming to terms with the truth any easier for them -- harder probably, based on every person I know who has found out hidden truths about their parentage -- but at least it would be more an existential problem than a logistical one at that point.

Of course, if she is DC and they are simply hiding it from everyone, I hope she finds out sooner rather than later.  Because if there isn't another little girl in another house, there won't be the question of where Juliana will live or who her "real" parents are, even if Julio and Isabella aren't biologically related to her.  If she is donor conceived, Juliana will have to deal with the brunt of that reality alone because she is the only one who will have lost family in that equation.

Unless of course the IVF accidental embryo switch scenario is the one that happened, in which case Julio and Isabella's biological child might exist somewhere else, born sometime else to someone else, and they will never find her or even know if she exists unless she takes a mass market DNA test.  Now I can't decide which scenario sounds worse. 

My Latest DNA Project

One of my hobbies is figuring out how I'm related to my various "DNA relatives" on Ancestry, 23andMe, and Family Tree DNA.  I love it.  It's my favorite kind of puzzle, and while some of them are simple enough to solve to keep me from getting too frustrated, there are a handful of people in the vicinity of 3rd to 4th cousin who I feel like I should be able to figure out but haven't.  Is it a non-paternity event?  Was there an adoption?  On their side or mine? 

I've been able to figure out everyone up through my second cousins and most of my third cousins at this point, typically up through third cousins a couple times removed, at least when their names are visible to me.  In some instances I've been able to determine their legal names from their user names and work from there, and in a couple rare occurrences I've identified private users on 23andMe simply by knowing who I'm looking for and what their maternal haplogroups ought to be (I'm proud of that one -- this is me patting myself on the back).

One of the closest relations I haven't been able to figure out yet is Aida.  Aida is a black woman my mother's age who has been a prominent figure in her community and in the US Civil Rights Movement.  She didn't know of any white people in her family, so when her 23andMe results came back, she was surprised to learn she was more than 50% white herself.  That meant there had to be quite a few white people in her more distant ancestry.

When I first talked to Aida, she knew a lot more about her ancestry than I knew about mine.  She comes from a large, proud family and has a cousin and a couple of aunts who have served as unofficial family genealogists back when that involved a lot more than internet research.  Her cousin devoted a few years in the '70s to visiting old family homesteads and interviewing "the old-timers." Thanks to a family website she showed me with all the data they've collected, I now know about as much about her extended family as she does. 

Now that my own family tree is better fleshed out (back to the early 1800s across the board and as far back as the 1600s in some branches of my tree) and we still have no family surnames in common, we're trying to figure out how we're related.  If I had to put money on it, based both on shared DNA and our respective family trees, I'd estimate we're somewhere in the vicinity of 3rd cousins twice removed.  She has a daughter, a granddaughter, and a couple first cousins on the various DNA databases.  Because I'm also related to those particular cousins, we know I'm related to her on her mother's side.  Because she isn't related to my paternal uncle, we know we're related on my mother's side too. 

Because my 23andMe ethnicity report says I'm 99.9% European, we know our closest common ancestor was also white.  I went through her family tree and highlighted all the people who were or could be white.  There are some slave owners further back whose surnames don't appear in my tree (so far).  A "non-paternity event" -- finding out someone's dad is not in fact his or her biological father -- is always a possibility, but even those locations don't appear in my family tree.  If I am related to those particular slave owning families, which are farther back in time than I would expect our closest shared ancestor to be, Aida and I must be cousins a couple times over to account for all our shared DNA.  I don't think that's the case, simply because we don't share as many DNA relatives in common as I would expect if we were twice related.  It's not impossible though.  My family has been in America for close to 400 years, and there was a lot of intermarrying between the same families over and over again for the first century or so.  More than one of my seemingly closest DNA relatives turned out to actually be my 5th cousin AND my 6th cousin, or my 4th cousin twice over.

However, there is another way Aida and I could be related.  Her grandfather was born just after the Civil War.  His mother was a slave, and she had a few kids, all of whom were listed as "mulatto" in census records beneath their mother's "black."  No one knows who his father was, but we're all pretty confident he was white.  I didn't have direct ancestors in the same state where Aida's grandfather was born, but it's possible one lived there for awhile and it didn't end up on public record.  Maybe during the Civil War, in which much of my family fought.  It's also possible one of my ancestor's brothers was Aida's mysterious great-grandfather, which would make us 3rd cousins, probably twice removed, depending on which branch of my family tree.

The most obvious way I've come up with so far to figure out how Aida and I are related involves finding someone to whom we are both related the same way.  We have a mutual distant cousin with whom we share the exact same 14.8 cM of DNA, but I haven't figured out how I'm related to her either. There are large blank spaces in her family tree that I haven't been able to fill.  I keep thinking if I figure out how she and I are related, Aida and I are probably related just a generation or two closer on the same branch of the family tree.

I printed out a few generations of Aida's mother's tree and my mother's as well -- just a couple pages in total -- so that I could shade in the names of people who couldn't be our common ancestors and tag the ones who I share with other known cousins.  I don't appear to share any of those cousins with Aida, but it's hard to be sure when some of them are distant relations and sites like Ancestry won't let you compare genomes anyway.  I think I've narrowed down my mother's side of the family tree by about half at this point.  I've even taken to fleshing out Aida's family tree with descendants of her grandfather's siblings, and their descendants too, in the hopes that I'll run across a name from one of my DNA databases.  If I found one, I would consider it a lead indicating that we were most likely related on her grandfather's side.  I've done the same with the slave-owning side of her family, but still no matches.

Setting aside the more obvious ills of slavery -- being kidnapped, held hostage, legally owned, and possibly beaten and raped, all so you can watch your children go through the same experiences -- slavery had some long-term side effects I am ashamed to admit didn't really occur to me until I started working on Aida's family tree.  For instance, slaves were given their owners' surnames.  I knew this.  This was a thing I knew.  But when I ran across the name of a famous slave with the same surname in the same region of Aida's ancestors around the same time, my first thought was that they might be related.  In my family tree that far back, people in the same immediate area with the same surname -- even common names -- tend to have been related in some way.  But in Aida's tree, it more likely meant people were owned by the same master, or by masters who were related.  It's like all slaves were subjected to an exceptionally messed up closed adoption, and those adopted surnames are the ones that persist today. 

No wonder Aida's holy grail of genetic genealogy is to find a cousin in Western Africa.  Every bit of data her family had about their ancestors in Africa was obliterated by kidnapping and slavery.  She knows no names or places; the people doing the kidnapping didn't write down her family's personal information in a ledger for later.  A generation or two might have held onto the knowledge for awhile, passing stories and names on to their children, but whatever might have existed once is gone now.  The DNA they handed down is all that's left, and with each passing generation, that DNA gets more diluted and the possibility of finding out who their ancestors once were grows weaker.

5 Reasons I Contacted My Sperm Donor Father That Have Nothing to Do with Money

I read this article today, an interview with a former anonymous sperm donor who is incensed by the idea that his offspring might find out his name and contact him.  He is a doctor who has "made a few bob along the way" and says he is concerned his offspring will try to lay claim to it.  Or that they'll ask him for money and he'll feel uncomfortable saying no...?  I'm not sure what his specific concern is.  He also mentions that he has adult children from his marriage and has not told them about their secret half-siblings, of whom there are at least twenty.  That secret coming to light seems to me to be a more probable dilemma.

This sperm donor reminds me of an extended family member (and doctor) who sent out a mass email to everyone in the family who supports socialized healthcare, attesting that they just want to take her hard earned money for themselves.  No one on that recipient list had ever asked her for anything, and none were hard up by any stretch, but it was -- in my mind -- her way of saying, "I have more money than you and therefore anything you do that I don't like is because you are poor and jealous and greedy."  It wasn't really about money, at least not about hers vs. theirs.  But it was a decent attempt to make family feel bad for supporting something they believed in that she didn't like.  This reminds me of that.

This sperm donor also says he fears for his physical safety because his offspring could come to his home and assault him.  He says he and his wife are thinking of moving to... throw off how long it would take for people to look up his new address online?  I don't know what he would hope to achieve by moving.  Would he stop working too?  Would he keep moving forever?  I think waiting to see if there is a credible threat and then filing a restraining order if necessary would be more effective than living life "on the lam," but I'm unacquainted with the laws in Australia.  Also, my solution would do nothing to evade offspring who reach out in a normal, benign manner.

As I see it, refusing contact with offspring through a sperm bank is like being on the Do-Not-Call list for telemarketers.  You've made your desire for no contact known, but there's still a chance you might get an unwanted call someday.  No one can shield you from all unpleasant encounters and possibly having to say "no" yourself at some point.  But you probably won't have to do more than that. 

"When you think about it, anyone who contacts you is going to have a problem.... If I have that many kids, what is the chance of having one who is disabled?" he ponders.  I don't quite know what to make of the argument that anyone who contacts him is "going to have a problem."  Does he mean only people with issues, such as disabilities or the aforementioned poverty and anger, will reach out to him?  I can see why he might believe that, I suppose, but as someone on the other end, I don't think it's accurate.  I wouldn't try to argue that I have no problems, but I certainly wouldn't share them with my biological father.  Nor with the parents who raised me, for that matter.  I might have problems, but I'm not unhinged.  For context, here is why I contacted my biological father, none of which had to do with money:

5 Reasons I Contacted My Sperm Donor Father

1. I wanted to know what he's like.  I had questions, like does he have any hobbies or interests in common with me.  I'm so different from the people who raised me.  Is it because I'm like him?  (Answer: at least in part, yes)

2. I wanted to meet him someday if he was open to that.  I wanted to hear his voice and see his mannerisms.  I wanted to see the resemblance from online photos amplified.  It's a surreal experience seeing myself mirrored back in someone else.  I couldn't see it until I saw old photos of him. 

3. He has adult children who I wanted to talk to if they were willing, and I thought they'd be more open to the news of a secret half-sister if they heard it from someone they knew.  (Answer: They were open to it, and I think hearing the news from their father helped immensely.)

4. I wanted him to know I exist.  I wanted him to waste a few of his brain cells thinking about me, looking me up online, wondering about me, the way I wondered about him. 

5. I was the closest DNA match to a close relative on a DNA database.  I wanted to give my biological father a chance to disseminate information as he saw fit before the news came out by other means.

You know what I did when he wrote me a letter saying never to contact him again?  Nothing.  Not a damn thing.  When I sent him a letter introducing myself, I cost him as much as anyone else who has ever sent him an ad or another piece of unwanted mail.  And if I had contacted him a second time, harassing him or demanding money, or tried to assault him at his home as the doctor in this article fears, he would have been justified in sending me a cease and desist letter and/or filing a restraining order. 

What he really needed to be concerned about was his secret getting out.  He had to decide who to tell and who he might reasonably be able to keep hiding the secret from.  That should be -- and if we're being honest, probably is -- the primary concern of any anonymous sperm donor:  keeping the secret.  Even if a sperm bank doesn't give your name to your offspring, a DNA test might uncover it, as mine did.  I walk around everyday with 50% of his DNA coursing through my veins and pretty much every part of my body.  And DNA is highly traceable. 

I know it's hard to accept that the anonymity you were once promised is dead, but this is the new reality.  You can continue to focus on imagined crises like "what if they want my money" or you can face the issues that are inevitable.  If you donated sperm, tell your wife and children.  There is a very high probability that this news will come out, probably in your lifetime, and everyone will handle it better if you're the one to tell them. 

New Functionality on AncestryDNA

I login to 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and FTDNA every few days to see if I have any new half-siblings (none so far).  This weekend I noticed that AncestryDNA has added an option to see "shared matches" among DNA relatives.  It only seems to show matches that they deem "4th - 6th cousins" or closer (which can include 3rd cousins several times removed and double 6th cousins and then some).  If you click on what they deem distant cousins or "5th - 8th cousins" it will show you nothing, regardless of whether or not you share that relative.  It also won't list the more distant cousins in your "shared matches" with other people.  I assume Ancestry leaves them out because accuracy plummets the more distant a relative is, and after you reach the vicinity of 6th cousin or so, you really can't use DNA to tell a distant cousin from another random "unrelated" human being. 

AncestryDNA also hasn't added any quantitative data, so you still can't see on which chromosomes you match like you can on FTDNA or GEDMatch (with everyone) and on 23andMe (with your match's approval).  Still, lack of ability to compare matches and quantitative data has been AncestryDNA's biggest shortcoming, and the fact that they are adding any functionality at all without requiring a paid subscription (like they do with their "DNA circles" currently in beta testing) is a pleasant surprise.

Bear in mind that just because you share a match with a relative doesn't mean that you are all related the same way on the same branch of your family tree.  Especially if you're like me and come from old American families that did a lot of intermarrying in the last few hundred years.  BUT if you've got a close relative on there such as a parent, you can now use that information to tell if someone isn't on their side of the family tree.  Not a match with Mom?  Must be a relative from your dad's side.  If you're looking for an anonymous parent and you get your other parent -- or failing that, a half-sibling or an aunt, uncle, or first cousin -- to test as well, this can help narrow things down enormously.

One of the best things about AncestryDNA is how easily they link to user family trees.  The trees on Ancestry are more reliably filled out and easier to view than on 23andMe or FTDNA or GEDMatch.  AncestryDNA also seems to appeal more as a company to the family genealogists and people who compile massive family trees.  I understand how I'm related to more of my matches on AncestryDNA than on any other DNA site, mostly because of the linked family tree function and an abundance of users who enjoy building their own family trees.  If AncestryDNA were to add quantitative data that allows users to view their matches' DNA and compare it with other matches like you can on the other sites, they would quickly become the best option in DNA testing.  For now though, if you're trying to deduce the identity of a parent, quantitative data is key, and I recommend starting with 23andMe.