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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2009-09 > 1253977248


From: "Roberta Estes" <>
Subject: [DNA] 23andMe Autsomal Testing and Proving Relationships
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:00:48 -0400


With several people considering the purchase of the 23andMe kit during the
special promo period when the price is so dramatically reduced, I've had
lots of questions about DNA testing in general, about how autosmal testing
works, and about possible uses for this test.
I'm going to talk a little about these questions and answers over the next
couple of days.
Today I'm going to talk about using this test to prove a relationship.
I can't tell you how many times over the years I've had someone ask me if
there as any way to "prove that so and so is my cousin". Of course, the
scenario varies with males and females, how closely related, etc., but the
basic question is still the same. Before now, I always had to tell them one
of three things:
1. If you are both males and share the surname, you can do the Y dna test
which which won't absolutely "prove" it, but is pretty compelling evidence.
However this scenario applied to few of the people asking.
2. If you both descend from a common female through female lines, you can
test your mtdna. Most of the time however, the question of paternity was
more of the father's identity and did not include a question about the
mother.
3. You can turn to paternity/siblingship testing at a separate nongenealogy
lab. These labs attempt to "reconstuct" families using the DNA of the two
people in question of course, and hope to get more members of the family
(like their parents) to participate as well so that the DNA can be
attributed to a source and thereby eliminated or included in the equation.
This approach is extremely expensive and often inconclusive.
Let me share my own story.
My father died in a car accident when I was 7 years old. After my
step-mother passed away some 25 years later, her daughter sent me a bundle
of letters that had to do with my family. One of these letters included a
letter from my aunt (my father's sister) to my step-mother. When I first
started doing genealogy, some 30+ years ago now, I had called this aunt and
asked her many questions. Although she answered them for me, or I thought
she had, she apparently was not inclined to divulge what she thought were
the family secrets. So she wrote a letter to my step-mother telling her all
about how unhappy she was that I was asking "all those nosey questions" and
then proceeded to tell my step-mother just what it was she was NOT going to
tell me and how it was really none of my business, etc. Well, thank goodness
she did that, because several years later, I would get my answers from that
very letter. Isn't fate a wonderful thing sometimes.
In the letter was a reference to the fact that my father had another child,
a boy. I was utterly stunned. I asked my mother about this and she was very
guarded, to say the least, about the topic. I would later learn that it's
because the child was born only 5 months before I was born. My father was
somewhat of a "colorful character", to put it mildly, and my mother was very
embarrassed about the situation. So, apparently, was the other woman, my
brother's mother. My father literally had two families in two different
states. Talk about the consumate "traveling salesman" story. Anyway, that
aside, I began a search for my brother whose name I didn't even know. Talk
about a needle in a haystack.
Fast forward about 20 years. I finally found my brother through a
combination of dogged research and happy accidents. One of my biggest breaks
was when I was trying to apply for a passport and discovered that there had
been something filed in a court in Fort Wayne, Indiana having to do with me.
I asked my mother why it was filed in Fort Wayne and she told me that was
where my father was living at the time. I went to Fort Wayne (to the
genealogy library there) for other purposes and subsequently happened by an
old City Directory. On a whim I picked it up and found my father, his "wife"
and MY BROTHER"S NAME. After that, it wasn't easy, but at least I had names
and locations to use. My aunt was long dead by this time and my mother had
already told me what she knew, which was little. She knew the first name of
the "other woman", but nothing more. At least that much confirmed that I had
located the right family.
After searching for nearly 20 years, I finally found my brother a few years
ago and he had no idea I existed. He had no siblings and his mother was now
deceased as well. We're both glad to have family. He took the Yline DNA test
and he did not match the ancestral Estes family. However, that doesn't mean
he's not my father's son, because we don't have the DNA of my father. Nor
did we have the DNA of my Estes grandfather. My grandfather only had 2 sons
who grew to adulthood and had sons that survived past childhood. The one
Estes male living in that line took the DNA test, and he didn't match either
the Estes ancestral line nor my brother. Now we were really up the creek
without a proverbial paddle. I was lucky enough to find one male who
descended from my great-grandfather who was still alive and he tested as
well, and he does match the Estes ancestral line, so we know that the
"break" in the DNA line came either with my grandfather's parentage or his
son's parentage or his grandson's parentage.
If you're keeping track here, we have 4 possible locations for the DNA to
have been "switched". The names below are fake to protect the guilty:)
My grandfather Will.
My grandfather's first son Joe (my father's brother).
Joe's son.
Joe's grandson (who took the test).
My brother (not my father's biological child).
Or a combination of these things.
Here's what I think happened and why.
Joe was the first child born to my grandparents. He arrived 5 months after
their marriage. Pure and simple, I think that he was not the child of my
grandfather. My grandfather may have known this, or maybe not. I also think
that my brother is possibly not my father's child (remember he was gone a
lot) as his "other wife" was known to be somewhat promiscuous. But of course
there are other scenarios and proof has remained elusive.
How would my brother and I ever unravel this mess? At this point we turned
to paternity/siblingship testing. This was extremely expensive, about $1000
for each test. We took this test twice, at two different labs, because the
first test came back inconclusive. We match at enough markers to be
"suspicious" and at few enough markers for them to declare that we are
"probably not half-siblings" but might be related more distantly. Given the
geographic circumstances, it's unlikely that we're related at all if we're
not half siblings. We were at this point even more exasperated, but we were
at the end of what technology had to offer us at the time.
With the introduction of this new test at 23andMe, we will have our answer
shortly. 23andMe tests over half a million locations on our DNA, not just
the 15 locations that paternity/siblingship testing has to offer. With the
Relative Finder product, we'll know for sure if we are half-siblings or not.
How will we feel about this? We've discussed it. Both of us knew our father
as our father and he viewed and treated us both as his children. We consider
ourselves to be brother and sister and whether that is a function of biology
or circumstances is irrelevant in terms of how we view each other. It's no
different to us that if one of us were adopted by our parents, we would
still be siblings. I am the only family he has (other than his kids) and for
me, I have one other half-sibling on my mother's side and that's all I have
as well (other than my kids). The world is too small to exclude anyone from
the family circle to do with circumstances over which they have no control.
But, we do still want to know. He wants to know who his father is and I want
to know if I've been doing the wrong genealogy for 30+ years. If I'm not
really an Estes biologically (meaning my brother is my biological brother,
which means his yline DNA is that of my father and means my father doesn't
match the ancestral Estes line), then I'd like to know so I can stop doing
the Estes genealogy and move on to whatever family I should be researching.
This has been a long story, but I hope it serves to illustrate how this type
of testing can begin to answer questions that were unanswerable before this
kind of technology was available.
Roberta

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