The World's Common Tater

A week ago I wrote about a DNA match my son got on My Heritage. To recap – My son mentioned he received an email from someone about a DNA match. He said he gets emails regularly from My Heritage about people who share DNA with him. Most of them are distantly related, but some are not. One of them matched as a possible second cousin or first cousin once removed and had my mother’s maiden name. I discovered my grandfather had other kids I did not know about from a first marriage.

I did send a Facebook message to the person who is likely my cousin. After a few days, he replied and asked for my email address because his sister wanted to contact me. His sister sent an email and in it said she remembered her dad mentioning a boy named Joseph and a little girl named Sarah. Sarah is my mom’s name. I have an uncle Joe. When I told her the rest of the names of my aunts and uncles she recalled hearing one of those names as well. It is pretty much 100% certain that these two are the kids of my mom’s half-brother.

I posted this information in our family group on Facebook. None of the cousins seemed to aware of any of this but it appears my mom’s siblings knew about the other kids but didn’t ever mention them to the kids. I don’t think the situation was a cordial one.

I have no plans to ever meet these cousins. I probably will never talk to them again. I barely see the cousins I know. If I was going to make an effort to meet family, I would reconnect with them before I made the effort to meet people I didn’t know existed.

It was a fun exercise and they are going to send me the names of my grandfather’s parents. I will send that information to my cousin who has a family tree on My Heritage.

Who knows what other relatives My Heritage might dig up.