ancestry

So I took an Ancestry.com DNA test.

Sounds like the beginning of a joke.  Turns out it's the beginning of a mystery.

Within two weeks of getting my results, I was contacted by someone named Tom Durant.  In his message, Tom said that he was adopted as an infant and has been working to find his biological roots.  Every time someone new appears in his DNA matches, he reaches out to them to ask how they are related, and indeed, Ancestry put us at a pretty high match - cousin level.  He mentioned to me that he had most of his maternal side figured out but that his paternal side was more difficult.  He mentioned the surnames Lavery, Carey, and Eaton, none of which rang a bell with me or ever appeared in my family tree information.  I told him I'd ask around.

Two days later, I got a message from someone named Bob Eaton.  Bob basically said, "Hey, looks like we are cousins. How is that?  In my family there are the names Lavery, Carey, and Eaton."

Hmm.

So I told him I'd ask around.  

Soon after those messages, I got another one from someone named Ann.  She said she was a biological cousin of Tom's from his maternal side and was helping him with his research.  She told me that because of the high cM number (centimorgans...how they rate the closeness of DNA matches...I don't know much more than that), I am closely related to both Tom and Bob - most likely cousins.  I told her that I didn't know how that could be possible since I know who all my cousins are on my paternal side and that there are no Laverys, Careys, or Eatons in my family.  She told me she was working on some information and that there seemed to be a common ancestor:  my paternal grandfather.

She then wrote this...

"I think there is an NPE in the mix somewhere fairly recently - Grandparent level.

In genealogy, the acronym "NPE" stands for "non-paternity event" (a.k.a., non-paternal event, false paternal event, mis-attributed paternity, etc.) meaning an individual is not the child of the father shown in the family's "paper" genealogy."

Hmm.

After much back and forth, we finally came up with the following conclusion.  We think that my paternal grandfather had a child with a woman whose maiden name was Lavery and married name was Carey.  That child grew up and married someone with the surname Eaton, and they had a son named Bob.  Bob Eaton.  So Bob Eaton's mother would have been my father's half sibling, which then would make Bob and I cousins.  And that is exactly what Ancestry.com put us at.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.

Both Bob Eaton and his wife JoAnn had done their DNA tests, and their results showed that they are related to EACH OTHER.  Do you want to know how?  JoAnn is the granddaughter of my paternal grandfather's sister.  That makes Bob and JoAnn second cousins.  Of course they had no idea since Bob had no reason to think he was ever descended from that family line.

See?  You fool around, and you fool around, and someone's going to wind up married to his second cousin.  This is what happens when you grow up in a small town.

What we can't figure out is how Tom Durant places in all of this.  We are still working on that.  We have some guesses.  My sister seems to think that one of our male paternal cousins is Tom's father.  Nobody will ever really know unless this cousin decides to do a DNA test.  Unfortunately, we haven't seen or spoken to him in years.  My sister does keep in touch with his daughter though, so I told my sister she should get our cousin's daughter to get her father to take a test.  We'll see if that ever happens.

Families.  You never really know, do you.