The DNA Test - Family Secrets and Mysteries
When I first started researching, Mum never showed much interest. As time went on and I began to share with her things I had discovered about her family, she would provide me with snippets of information that I could follow up on. Some were grounded in fact, some were family folklore.
Some years ago, a relative had told my sister Rosemary that Mum had been adopted. No more information than that, just that she had been adopted. On checking Mum’s birth certificate, her parents were listed as the couple who I believed to be my maternal grandparents. I did not push the issue and continued my research into the family.
Eventually, another cousin told me, at Mum’s 90th Birthday, that Mum was adopted. I decided the time had come to ask Mum about this. The conversation went something like this…….
“Mum I need to ask you something, were you adopted?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Cousin X told me at your party that you were adopted.”
“Well, you know that he is silly and has no idea what he is talking about.”
“Someone also told Rosemary the same thing several years ago.”
“I was not adopted. A and E were my parents, and I have no idea where this is coming from
I could not draw her on the topic; it was firmly closed.
Sometime later, I needed to produce Mum’s birth certificate, and I noticed a huge discrepancy in the dates. Mum was born in 1925, and her birth certificate was dated 1943.
I asked her about this, and she was as puzzled as I was. She asked me if I could have the discrepancy corrected. I was a little half-hearted in my response, thinking that it would be difficult, but I said I would see what I could do. I did nothing about it till sometime later when she asked me if I had been able to fix it. So began the process of trying to correct the certificate. Phone calls and emails to BDM NSW proved fruitless. I was met with a firm “It cannot be changed.” I was told it was a legal document issued by the State Government and the dates would remain. In the meantime, Mum passed away, and I was still in communication with the BDM. I eventually asked the question as to why Mum’s birth had not been registered in 1925. During that conversation, the person I was speaking to mentioned adoption, and I told her I was aware Mum had been adopted. Her response was “that is correct”, and to get a copy of the original birth certificate, there was a process of application through the Department of Communities and Justice.
In the meantime, I had a DNA test through Ancestry.com and did not get one connection to any member of Mum’s Adopted Family.
I began the process of application, which took much longer than anticipated, to get the original certificate. When I would ring and ask where my application was up to, they would say they had a backlog because of COVID (this all occurred in the middle of the pandemic). I thought there must have been a large staff, many of whom were ill with COVID, but when I made this comment, the person told me that no, they had been swamped with applications for certificates, as during this time of COVID, when people were at home with time to think about their heritage, they were swamped with applications.
Eventually, the certificate arrived, and we had the name of the mother, but, of course, no father was listed on the certificate. I began the next part of the process by applying to the Supreme Court for a copy of the adoption file. The file contained information that in 1943, my adopted grandparents finalised the adoption. Mum would have been 18 at this stage. In the documents contained in the file is an affidavit sworn by her adopted mother, saying Mum had never been told she was adopted and they had no intention of ever revealing that fact to her. This has led me to believe that Mum did not know about this part of her story.
The DNA test has given some connections to Mum’s birth mother’s family, but nothing directly to her father. I am sure that once I can sort through and understand the DNA connection, I may be able to discover the name of her father.
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