Ancestry is Playing Around With Your DNA

And you have no say in the matter.

Ancestry has decided to reinvent not only genetic genealogy, but also genealogy itself.
They do not give us the ability to check their predictions against the known facts of genetic genealogy by refusing to provide a chromosome browser capability.If you can get your match to upload their results to gedmatch that is wonderful. Then I can get an idea of how this person might fit into the family I am helping.

However, and it is a really big however only about 10% of the Ancestry testers make it to gedmatch, So we can not check between multiple matches. Another big "However", Ancestry provides the capability to share DNA results. I have records of sending out several hundred sharing requests and have received 3 agreements to do that.

Now Ancestry has taken it upon themselves to do 3 things, supposedly in place of a chromosome browser. One of their excuses has been that the average DNA tester cannot work with chromosome data. Has anyone at the company tried to figure out how the new approaches that Ancestry now gives us really works for adoptees. It s a lot more complex than working with chromosome data, I assure you.

The 3 things Ancestry has given us are:

DNA Circles; A grouping of people Ancestry has decided are related to you, no matter what the DNA says, The position is that they take a couple of people who do share DNA with you and try to link up others who share tree connections in their collections. One of my questions after writing a lesson on using these tools, is why do I want to include third cousins 3 times removed in my tree? Almost all of the people they present as being related to me are - so what? They are not people one would normally have added to a family tree. I will admit that I identified the offspring of a very distant cousin through these circles, but if I had wanted to, I would have already discovered them in a more direct way.

Predicted Ancestors, called New Ancestor Discoveries. I prefer to refer to these as Predicted Ancestors as they may be someone's New Ancestor Discoveries, but they are not mine. As an adoption researcher, they might as well give me the Emperor of China. I would have as much chance of finding the tie in as I do with these "NAD"s.

Your Ancestor's Life. Now here comes Ancestry's attempt to reinvent your genealogy. For your DNA Circles matches and Predicted Ancestors, they scrape the bottom of the barrel and lump together all those erroneous trees and give your Ancestor a totally new life. My third great-grandfather, for instance, one of a line of namesakes, marries his step mother in their version, and moves around the State of Maine when in fact, the county and town names changed. Who can I get to correct this? Ancestry is contaminating the carefully researched life histories reported by many genealogists, In my book, this is a crime.

I do suggest to people that they test first with Ancestry as the database and resources are so huge that I am eventually solving many of my cases with the help of their data. There is a difference in data and information. I am looking at Ancestry for data. They want to give me information, data that they have processed and given their slant.

When I suggest that people test with Ancestry, I tell them that they must upload the results to Gedmatch and to FTDNA so I have a backbone of chromosome data to work with. That has been working reasonably well. If possible a person should also test with 23andme so that they can fish in all the ponds of test takers.

We are all aware that interpreting your test results can involve a lot of work. The advertisements make it sound like you test and they hand you the ancestors you need to identify, Well, it does  not work that way. We at DNAAdoption and DNAGedcom work hard to provide educational resources to help you.

I have been rewriting our classes with a different approach in mind. What if I give you the chance to actually work through a case with me. I explain the theories and facts along the way and provide lots of resource and hints about how to proceed.  We have split our old class into a Basic Autosomal Class and an Advanced Class. The Basic will give you all the instruction you need for 95% of the cases, but if you have a particularly difficult case or you are a DNA Junkie type person, I will go deeper into some advanced techniques in the Advanced Class.

We also have a Beginning Class for the very new Beginner,We have First Look classes for when you get your First Results to help you move around the vendor's web site and a Y-DNA class.

You can see the list of classes at http://dnaadoption.com/index.php?page=online-classes. We have an automatic sign up process that takes payment through Paypal.  You can always send us a check instead if you prefer. We have extremely low charges for these online classes that you take at your own pace. If you have a financial hardship we will waive the fee.

I am sorry it was so long between posts but I have been awfully busy.I hope this one helps you to skeptically look at Ancestry information and prove or disprove it in your search.

Happy Searching and enjoy the journey

Diane

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DNA is a Miracle

DNA is a miracle for those trying to find birth family members as well as those genealogists looking to get through brickwalls.

At DNAadoption.com and its associated yahoogroup, DNAadoption, we have been helping people solve those impossible searches for birth parents and birth siblings where either nothing is known about them , or where a limited amount is known. This includes adoptees, those who do not know their fathers and donor babies.

The demand for help on these cases is huge. The people who can help is limited so DNAadoption takes the approach of educating people to do their own search as much as possible. We provide classes, documents, tools (through our tool website DNAgedcom.com), methodologies, and answers to questions for those who are searching.

The Methodology involves testing with at least one of the 3 major companies, and then organizing the results to show where there are overlapping DNA segments. In general, the closer the relationship, the longer the segment. 

As mentioned before, there are two sides to a helix and the address numbering sequences are the same, so in addition to the overlapping segments, it must also be determined who is In Common With (ICW) whom. I call this having a blood relationship with each other. This determines which people are on one side of the helix and which are on the other side. These are paternal and maternal side, but there is no clue at this point as to which side is which.

To follow through with the people identified in this manner as being blood related as well as sharing inherited DNA segments, it is necessary to explore the trees of these matches, If the searcher can establish an intersection between the trees at some time in history, then the ancestors of these matches are likely to be the ancestors of the searcher as well.

I have covered most of this recently but there is a new avenue to be approached to augment this, I am finding more and more matches with the help of the testing at AncestryDNA. Unfortunately, AncestryDNA does not provide visibility of the DNA segments and numbers behind their matches. so an adoptee or someone who does not have a good family tree, must upload their data to FTDNA ($39 fee) and/or to gedmatch.com so that we can interpret these numbers into relationships. This is particularly important as we get into the closer relationships. We just had a case where Ancestry identified a match as a first cousin, but when analyzing these numbers, we realized that it was an aunt. At that point, identification of the birth father as the brother of the match was straight forward. AncestryDNA insists that most people do not want to have to work with the numbers, but in failing to provide the facts behind the match they are doing adoptees and those whose trees involve unexpected parental events, such as a father who was not the mother's husband, a great disservice. In my opinion, the reason why AncestryDNA insists on sticking to this approach can only be because of some hidden financial motive in an unknown business plan. Pressure from the community has not convinced them to change their ways. Ancestry has now tested a half million people, and they hold huge amounts of data that belong to the person testing and refuse to reveal it.

Recently Ancestry decided to develop algorithms that eliminated 2/3 or so of a person's matches. It may not have mattered to the genealogist, but to the genetic genealogist trying to uncover birth families, these smaller matches, many of which were documented to fit into an adoptee's ancestry line were important clues in the search. It is shameful that these were taken out of the matches without consideration of proven common ancestors.

Now comes the plus of Ancestry's extensive testing. This is converted to a plus by the independent development of tools to help analyze what data we have.

DNAgedcom.com which is run by the partnership of Rob Warthen (developer), Karin Corbeil (support) and Diane Harman-Hoog (analysis), is stepping up to provide a set of tools which can reveal relationships. As of the current stage of development, someone using DNAgedcom.com, can download data from FTDNA and 23andme to analyze the DNA segments. Programs written by KItty Cooper and Juan Pizarro organize the data into a spreadsheet form, The new additions to this site, facilitate uploading gedcoms and the Ancestors of Matches and Matches files produced by the Chrome Ancestry DNA Helper, into a database where ancestors can be matched, compared and searched for pertinent data. This ability is referred to as Gworks on DNAgedcom.com

This gives us a lot more insight into the flow of surnames in the trees of DNA cousins and has already revealed some birth family matches.

So now we are using the DNA to set up an investigative framework and Gworks to explore that framework. This is proving to be very powerful.

FTDNA made changes to their infrastrucure which broke our downloads process and at the same time, Gedmatch.com decided to offer a tiered system of programs. In doing so, gedmatch removed a key program output for our identification of ICW matches - changing it from a free file output of several thousand matches to a subscribe charged output of about 400 matches.  This has hurt the way adoptees can work with this data. At the same time, FTDNA really stepped up to the plate and is now providing an API through which Rob and his programmers can download more reliable data. Thank you FTDNA! But all these changes happened at the same time and necessitated our suspending our classes until the process could be redefined and new documentation written. Classes should resume for Autosomal DNA in the near future and we have just added an Y-DNA class to start this month.

So I see a lot of progress and hope for great work and results in 2015.

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Adoption Searches Using DNA

The method some of us have developed in the DNAAdoption group  for working with Autosomal DNA results is pertinent to genealogy searches as well.

You will find a methodology and other documentation on http://www.dnaadoption.com
There is a yahoogroup DNAadoption, that provides interchange of information among individuals working with their DNA results.

Despite what the ads for DNA testing look like, in almost every case, it takes a great deal of work to uncover the connections. However, the methodology does work.

Usually one gets a list of DNA cousins spread over many generations. However, recently one lucky person logged in to see her results and found that her birth mother had been tested and identified! This is everyone's dream of course.

The usual method is to identify the closest cousins. The longer the length of overlapping DNA segments, the closer the relationship. Then we try to get trees for these cousins and identify how they are related. Where the have a common ancestor, the person who is seeking also has that ancestor. Working down through trees looking for a person who might have been in the right place at the right time, it is necessary to follow all offspring of all generations. This can get pretty messy to follow, so I break out a separate tree using genealogy software of all descendants of that common ancestor.

I am working with a woman who has been looking a long time. She went a couple of years without any significant results from her DNA testing, but in the last couple of months has gotten results from 8 third DNA cousins. It is now a matter of hoping for good trees and following down these trees looking for the point where they once again intersect.

I have now been able to add people who tested with all three systems to one spreadsheet for comparison. I do this by downloading the FTDNA and 23andme files from http://dnagedcom.com. I use data in FTDNA's chromosome browser list and 23andme's FIA list. The only data you will have in the FIA list is that from people who have shared genomes with you. I then ask Ancestry matches to upload to http://gedmatch.com where I can see the chromosome numbers. Now I can compare the data of what once seemed like apples and oranges.

I hope in the next blog to give you some success stories.

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The Miracle of DNA for Adoptees

When I first started working with DNA for adoptee searches, I had some skepticsm as to how it could be done by most adoptees. Many of those searching having little computer experience and are older than the average computer user. I can now report that I am pleasantly surprised. In my first couple of months of searching, I asked everyone I came across for an outline of the methodology that should be used with DNA results to find birth family. No one could really tell me, so I finally stopped looking and decided to write down the process as I went. It was a trial and error process that continues to be refined to this day. The original methodology was contributed to by many patient people. Recently Karin Corbeil has been a huge help. With Karin's encouragement, I wrote a class on Working With Autosomal DNA. Karin and I take turns teaching it. Over 100 people have completed the course. The class has been very successful. To our immense gratification the method works. It is really a lot of effort, but it does work and it does identify birth families. You can find out about the class on the DNAadoption server. If you browse through the site index you will see many kinds of papers for various aspects of the search.

When I started working with DNA, we might have had one or two reunions a month at the most. Now we have having multiple ones per week and the rate of solution is increasing.

A few months ago, a core of the DNA Search Angels and technologists moved to a new Yahoogroup - DNAAdoption. This was done so that people who were serious about advancing the ability to use DNA results could communicate more directly with those who were searching and so that we would have a place to make our documentation and tools available for those who need them. You can join this group at DNA Adoption Yahoo Group. Sometimes there are lots of messages but by reading them you will accumulate knowledge of the subject and also find out how to get more information.

There is a third part to our educational system. This is the server http://dnagedcom.com where you can download tools and use on line tools to get your data from tests. About our class; it is necessary to learn to work with a spreadsheet to do the work. We are talking about storing and manipulation large amounts of data. We had one lovely lady in our first class who was pretty clueless on spreadsheets and DNA. She is in her late 70s. She worked hard and is now researching her data as well as answering questions for others. We are so proud of her. It can be done!

The process is that you test. You get a set of DNA cousins back. You identify those that have overlapping DNA segments with each other. Then we triangulate these results with you as part of the triangle. We have to use trees to find where people are related. We build a lot of trees. Once we have identified persons who are 3rd DNA cousins (common great-great grandparents or closer), we start to look at all the offspring in every generation, looking for someone in the right place at the right time who generally meets the predicted generation difference. Often this requires another DNA test to confirm or deny. The suspense of waiting for results is intense, but what joy when it comes through.

I hope if you are an adoptee and have been kept from finding your birth parents by lack of information, you will investigate this possibility. We are solving the impossible ones! It truly is a miracle!

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Adoption Reunion and DNA

I have been postponing writing on this subject for some time until I decided just how to handle this. I have been recruited to work on DNA matching for adoptees. This is a pretty complicated issue. It is not just a matter of get a DNA test, find your birth parents.

For those without computer skills and the ability or willingness to grasp scientific concepts this is a major hurdle to overcome. Part of the problem is that there are only a few very overworked search angels doing this. There are two yahoogroups - AdoptionDNA and DNA-Newbie that can help answer questions and guide you but for the timid this can be overwhelming,

Several of us have been pressuring the DNA testing companies to supply more tools and interpretations of the data. Some are coming and I have no doubt that in the future there will be more tools. However, as of today they are not there.

The tests I have been working with are tests on autosomal DNA. For this I recommend testing with FamilyTree DNA. There are two major companies involved in the testing, Ancestry.com is also entering the field. You do not want to just choose the cheapest available company for this. You want one that has a significantly large database of testers to match your test against. I choose Family Tree DNA, despite the fact that they have a smaller database than 23andme for the following reason which I feel is significant. Many of the testers in 23andme are there for medical predictor tests and are not interested in responding to adoptees looking for ancestry information. It can be very frustrating to see that you have matches to people and to not be able to get them to respond to give you the information you need to make any connection. You will definitely get more matches there, but I suggest testing with Family Tree DNA first.  A test costs about $300 They occasionally go on sale. A male adoptee can try a Y-DNA test and/or a Family Finder test which tests autosomal DNA. A female can have the Family Finder test. Y-DNA only passes from male to male, but autosomal is passed by both sexes,. This is on the cutting edge of DNA science and there are still lots of things to work out. If you have Ashkenazi heritage, then the results can be less clear. The autosomal testing which I work with , identifies "cousins" who are related. This is a bit of a misnomer as one would expect one cousin to be related to another. This is not always the case. "Cousins" are labeled with a degree of distance prediction which can range from 1st cousin on up. Anything past 4th cousin can be problematical as the reliabilty decreases with distance.

The idea is that one takes two cousins who are related to you and to each other and who share significantly long DNA segments on the same chromosome. After securing a family tree (which rules out other adoptees for the most part), then you look for common ancestors (intersections) on these trees. Theoretically you then trace down the possible descendants from there and find your line. This is very difficult (read impossible) if you have no information on your parentage at all. Also most of these ancestries are further back than the prediction so a fourth cousin, which is most probable, is probably a 5th or 6th cousin in actuality. This means that the common ancestor is in the 17th or 18th century. In these days, there were usually very big families so tracing down the branches is most difficult. Many family trees cannot be extended fully to this era..

Here is the good news. More will be coming and you can in fact collect family information that will be of use then and that helps you understand your ancestry now.

I am working on several cases, currently with two of them, I have a target (a family name or enough information on the person that I may be fortunate enough to identify them). I am going to discuss a different search where I do not have any of this information.

This search involves a woman from Texas who has no confirmed birth information. Her birth information is missing or falsified. We are not even 100% sure of the birth date. So far I have been able to identify the family line from one side of her family (we think it is the maternal side, there is no way to predict from the data). We are looking for those we think may be closer relatives for additional DNA testing to confirm this. On this side of the family we had two predicted second cousins which helped us zero in on the line. On the other side of the family,we have mostly 3rd and 4th cousins so we are only able to identify ancestors so far. Matches come  in all the time, so this will change. In the meantime, I have been able to construct a family tree of hundreds of ancestors. She now knows that her family mostly came to this country from England to Isle of Wight or Henrico County Virginia. They remained there for a generation or two and spread out into the rest of Virginia and North Carolina. Many of these ancestors followed Daniel Boone up into Kentucky. These were mostly the second or younger sons who did not inherit the plantations. Her relatives then came from Kentucky and Virginia to Texas to settle yet another frontier.

For this adoptee, this has been a big deal. She says it proves that she did not drop from the sky. It gives her a deeper identity.

This is the result of several hundred hours of research. It is not easy, but this sort of information is there. If these are your expectations, please test and go for it. The more people who test, the more possibility we have of matches. I recently found out that my brother had done the health testing at 23andme and predictably was not answering relationship queries. I am taking care of that and also making sure that our extensive New England genealogy is available for matching. Results from 23andme can be ported to ftDNA for a fee so I am doing that. This is definitely the wave of the future and you can get it on it if you are open to learning and have the right expectations.

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The Role of DNA in Birth Family Searches

Many adoptees who had exhausted other avenues for finding birth families, have been turning to DNA testing. The science is still new but can give important clues as to one's heritage. In additional to identifying people who are different degrees of "cousin" matches, it also can give the adoptee information on ethic heritage as well.


The two largest DNA companies for this purpose are FTDNA and 23andme. For this, it is beneficial to have a company that has a lot of tests recorded so that your DNA can be matched with as many others as possible. Recent tools have been developed that let you use the information from one of these services in the other. Since each service checks on on different markers, the results will be different and a comparison the two sets of results can be beneficial. 


After testing and getting results joining a forum, such as the yahoo group AdoptionDNA can be helpful as advice is freely shared among members of the group.


As more testing is done, your results are updated so over time you get more and more information. Either of these services can advise you as to what tests you should get.


You will expect to see results come back with indications of 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins, etc. Also important is the length. Regarding FTDNA results, both the TOTAL amount of shared DNA and the LONGEST BLOCK are important, but it is the longest block that is more indicative of a more recent connection.  For example, a person could have lots of little pieces of shared DNA, depending on how DNA combines over many years-many generations, but not any large shared block, so the most recent common shared ancestor may not be as recent. A larger shared block of DNA means a more recent shared common ancestor.  Usually a longest shared block of over 10-12.cM is considered most significant for considering a closer common connection. 


There are a number of online tutorials to help you understand how this works and the folks on the forum will also help guide you through this. 


Exploring these relationships is a lot of work, but when you have no more information, it is another avenue to explore.

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Back at Last - Have You Thought About Your Library As A Resource?

I had a long vacation and just did not get back into the blog writing groove.
Have you thought about the resources your local and university library have for you. I use them a lot.
Local Library Resources -
My local library - King County Library System in Washington has hundreds of data bases. Many that with your library card id you can just log in and use. A few that because of licensing you have to go in to use.
The is usually a category list and many databases under each one. Of particular note is:
Ancestry.com (you usually have to go to the library to use this one)
Newspaper archives including state wide newspapers not found elsewhere.
Obituaries
Heritage Quest
New York Times Historical Articles 1857-2001
19th Century Newspapers
World Wide Vital Records
American Indian History and Culture
and many more sources.

In the University of Washington Library you can search on the UW collections but also on universities world wide. I have found this particularly useful for college yearbooks and masters theses.

The best part of most library websites is the ability to ask a librarian a question and receive a fairly quick response. Some libraries even have chat facilities. They can tell you where to find resources - I recently found that there are commencement lists of UW classes, they will usually look things up and copy material for you - sometimes there is a small fee for material and very occasionally for hourly cost, but they have always been very reasonable.

Most libraries maintain obituaries of people in their area. The Rochester NY library for example has life event lists where volunteers have taken births, deaths and marriages from newspapers and made a large database. It is worth contacting a library in an area you are working on to see what additional resources they have and if you are not a member of that library ask if there is a way you can get access to the information.

Librarians are for the most part great researchers. Use their skills.

Until next time.
Diane

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The Courage to Search

When someone finally reaches out and makes the search commitment, I understand that it is a decision not lightly taken.

It takes a lot of courage to really bite the bullet. We see a lot of people on lists who are lurking trying to get up that courage. In looking, you are really exposing yourself to that fear of rejection again. Is the hope of discovering the truth of your birth family worth the risk? People who have even found things that they do not like, being born in jail, parents deceased, drug use, etc., say that knowing is better than not knowing. That there is a certain peace and completeness to their life having found out.

Of course, we have lots of good reunions as well.

I search even though I am not one of the adoption triad, because I feel that this country treats adoptees unfairly. I do not think that anyone should be discriminated against by the government; adoptees and also birth parents definitely are. I have truly enjoyed doing my family genealogy. It is important for me to know where I came from. Adoptees do not have that option. I sometimes give adoptees the start of a family tree once I resolve the identity problem.

Having medical information is becoming more and more important.

But what actually spurs me the most is that nobody should have these things withheld from them.

So for those of you lurkers, dive in. It is YOUR information, you deserve to have what everyone else has in the way of access and rights.

I wish there was no need for adoption, but as long as there is, I hope to get many more calls that say “for the first time I saw someone who looks like me”.

This was written and posted on nwsar@yahoogroups.com. This is a list dedicated to helping people in the Pacific Northwest and California who are looking to reunite with birth family members.

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Another Reunion Search Story

It has been a while since I posted. This is an older case, but still one of my favorite. I thought I had found her mother and then waited 3 hours to hear from her. I picked up the phone to hear - "I just got off a 3 hour phone call with my mother!" Here is Polly Jones' story in her own words.

I have always known I was adopted.  My name is Polly Jones and I am 56. I was born October 10, 1954 in San Francisco.  After many years of waffling, trying to decide, do I look or don't I for my birth Mother.  I was adopted when I was only a few weeks old through The Children's Home Society and raised by the best parents and a loving sister who is 8 years older.  But as I got older, I got curious.  As an adult, I had decided to search and got some information from the Children's home.  My family name was Sirak and all were healthy.  My birth mother was 26 when I was born.  I also tried a search company Omnitrace who also gave me some information, I was born Suzanne Maire Ryles.  They had told me there were many daughters in the family and all close in age so they did not know which one gave birth to me.  These bits of information were very exciting to know. 

Then one day in August 2008, I was looking for a Yahoo Group and my search brought the list up alphabetically and the 1st one was Adoption Search Angels.... that had to be a sign...I searched the site and found that people wrote the information about themselves or a person they were searching for and one of the Angels took that information and really dug deep into their resources and found answers from the entries I was reading.   I took the chance.  I put in everything I had gathered and pushed the 'enter' button,,, and waited... It was not more than an hour and I had my angel, Diane Harman-Hoog.... I was ecstatic that my story was actually going to be researched. 

We communicated daily about information she had found, people I needed to call to find the right Sirak family.  She gave me so many leads to call to try to find family dynamics that could fit my situation.  I was no nervous making those calls.  All the people I called were very helpful and curious about what I was doing... all wished me good luck and gave me information on their Sirak family,,,that was my part of the search.  Added into my Angel mix was Diane's friend, Marilie Auger who did a lot of the history of the family, newspaper articles, obituaries and marriages in the Sirak family. 

Then that fateful day, after 2 weeks of emails and phone calls, I got multiple emails and calls from Diane and I knew something had been discovered. .  She was pretty sure she had found the right Sirak family and my mother's name is JoAnne. She is the oldest of 5 children, 1 younger sister 4 brothers. She gave me phone number to call in Florida  Now I had jumping beans inside.  What if I found her?  What would her reaction be?  Growing up, I always had one statement that I wanted to tell my birth mother.  "I was raised by a great family. This is what I always wanted you to know."   As I got older, I wanted her to know I have 2 daughters and a granddaughter. 

I called the number with shaking hands and it rang and rang and I got a generic answering machine.  This was not something you leaving and a message.  I called over 2 days and got the same machine.  I asked Diane what should I do.  She said to call her brother.  OMG!!  So I called James Sirak,  he answered.  I could barely speak. 

"I said my name is Polly Jones and I was working on a genealogy search for a client and I was looking for the Sirak family that has 2 daughters and 5 son's.  (we found out another brother had been born after I was)  Is this your family dynamics?"  "Yes it is." James replied.  "I am looking for the oldest sister and if I could have her name?"  James said "No, but if you give me your information, I will have her call you."  So I gave him my information and told him Thank You very much and wondered,,, will she call?  That was the longest 3 minutes of my life.  My phone rang and it was her.  She said "As soon as Jimmy told me there was a call from from San Francisco, she knew it was me." I gave her my original message after all these years and 3 hours later we were still talking...  I found out where my green eyes came from, her.  She and her husband, who had passed 4 years before, had 5 children, 3 daughters and 2 sons.  Their middle daughter has my same birth date, 4 years later.  All her girls were 2 years apart including me.  Now I as the oldest of 6... How cool!!!   All of her children have children so my gut feeling that I had siblings was true.  We said "I Love You" so many times during that 1st 3 hour conversation.  She emailed me her picture and I did the same.  Oh how we looked alike... Finally I have a family I resemble, and also for my girls.   We found out so much about each other.  She lives in Tennessee,  but she was in Florida when she got pregnant and came to San Francisco to stay with an Aunt and Uncle.  After I was born, she stayed in San Francisco, got a job and met her husband, who was from Salinas.  After they were married on October 29th, 1955, their 1st daughter Jenny, was also born in San Francisco.  October 29th is also the same date my adopted parents were wed in 1944.  After the earthquake in 1957, there left San Francisco.  JoAnn asked me how I got the name Polly from Suzanne?  My parents had changed it to Polly Ann.  Like me, we have thought about each other every day,, wondering.  Now that was all over.

Within the next month, JoAnne had told her children, about me.  They were shocked that she could keep the secret for 55 years.  Jenny told her "Where is she?  Let's go meet her"  So last September,  JoAnne and Jenny came to San Francisco for our reunion.  The first meeting at the airport, was indescribable.  We couldn't stop hugging and smiling.  It was looking at myself!  We are so much alike, same temperament, same sence of humor, same eyes.  It as spending time with my best friend.  We spent hour talking and trying to catch up on everything we had not said on the phone and almost daily emails.  Jenny arrived a couple of days later and it started over again.  We look so much alike, there was no doubt we were sisters.  

We spent time in the city, finding the apartment the 3 of them had lived in, the church where JoAnne and Richard had been married in, just reliving where they worked and walked as they got to know each other.  Pictures galore.  We had a story to tell and we did just that.  To the  people on the Cable Car, waitresses, busboys,  not every one, but a few chosen ones who were all so happy for us.  I remember a young busboy at a restaurant in Tiburon, we talked to, it brought tears to his eyes.  He had never hard anything like our story.  We were so touched by his emotion. 

We 3 all text, and email and keep up with all of the going's on... I plan to go to Tennessee this year to meet the rest of the family.  Jenny travels a lot in her profession, so I am planning a trip to Colorado where she is currently working in February or March. 

During one of our conversations while we were walking around, Mom was talking about telling her kids about me and Jenny said something about Mom spilling the beans.  I asked if I was the beans, Yes,,that was me.  So she gave me the nickname, of course, Beans.  I love it... 

Suzanne Marie Ryles, aka Polly Jones

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One Child's Solution to the Family Tree Project Problem

Marianne recently completed her search after many years. She had to get the assistance of the state as an emergency medical search. From information provided by the intermediary the birth family was able to contact her. She has 7 siblings on her mother's side alone! They have even met in person and Marianne is receiving some answers about her medical and family history.
When I started working with her on her search over a year ago, I told her I would do some genealogy searching for her when we found her family. I was able to fulfill that promise and just sent her 15 generations of her family history. This is her reply:

"WOW!  THANK YOU so much!   From a twig to a TREE!   When I was a little girl in 4th grade I got my first F.  "ROOTS" was in full bloom on national television, and everyone wanted to suddenly find theirs!  Our teacher assigned us to research and write out our family tree, and do some sort of art project to go with it. 

Well I went home and told my adoptive parents about this assignment, and they happily shared information about their family.  They took out the family photo's and showed me their grandparents, aunts, uncles great aunts etc...It was all very interesting and fulfilling-for them.  I meanwhile, felt more and more alien with each generation they discussed. 

All of a sudden at the age of 10, I felt more alone then ever. 

I put together a very nice report,(in my opinion). I took a small fallen branch with still smaller branches, and made photo ornaments to hang on each branch, with my mother and fathers pictures at the top.  I turned this in with a written report, citing when and where people were born,etc.   The teacher had us all read our reports out loud.  When it came to my turn she told me that mine was incomplete.  She would let me do mine the next day when I had finished it.  She wanted me to put MY info on my tree. 

Well at this point, call it rebellion-call it feeling very strange trying to be someone you truly were not, call it whatever you will, as I STILL don't know what to call it- I had no place of birth, my birth certificate was blank on identifying information.  I was always introduced by my parents as their adopted daughter,  When I would ask about my ethnic origins my  (a)parents would tell me, that I was something -ish, they didnt remember.  This made me feel like anything that mattered to me or my identity was insignificant in comparison to my adoptive identity.  (Yes- i was 10 and yes- I had these feelings)

 I was really 'feeling adopted' with this "ROOTS" assignment.  Okay Teacher-you want MY family tree, your gonna get it!   I turned in my family tree, as I saw it.  I took a coffee can, painted it pink, filled it with sand and stuck a single twig in it, with my picture atop. My report read something like, My name is Marianne Biondo.  I don't know what name I was born with.  I dont know where I was born, and I think my birthday is right, but I'm not sure.  I don't know where my roots lie.  I am a something-ish.  This is all I know about my roots.

 I got an F.  But even today I am proud of that F, because that was all I truly knew about my "roots".  That F was honest with no bells or whistles."

I thought many of you adoptees would identify, but Marianne had the courage at 10 to speak out. It is incredible even today how insensitive teachers can be on that issue. My grandchildren still get assigned that project and I always wonder if the teachers have any idea how much they hurt the adopted ones.

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