\nDo you know where you come from? Do you know what your real heritage is? Do you know how far your family tree goes back? A lot of people think they have an idea about their family history, where they\u2019re from, and what their heritage is. However, thanks to the rise of at-home DNA tests, more and more people are discovering that not everything is what it seems. These people thought they\u2019d take at at-home DNA test, sometimes just for fun, but they weren\u2019t anticipating what shocking results they\u2019d all find.
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\n[post_page_title]From Jane Doe to\u2026[\/post_page_title]
\nKaren Heiting was abandoned at the door of a church in Chicago when she was just a tiny baby.
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\nNobody knew where she had come from and there was no information about who her family might be. She was labeled \u2018Jane Doe\u2019 which is the name given to someone with no name. She never thought she\u2019d be able to find her relatives when the time came, but then she took an at-home DNA test, and everything changed.
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\n[post_page_title]Sending off her DNA to Ancestry.com[\/post_page_title]
\nAfter Karen Heiting sent off her DNA, she wasn\u2019t expecting to find any living relatives. However, the results were utterly shocking.
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\nThrough the test, she found out that she had two half-brothers who looked just like her – Ed and Ray. On top of this, the DNA test showed her several other blood relatives, mainly cousins, that she never thought she would find. Suddenly, \u2018Jane Doe\u2019 had found the missing link.
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\n[post_page_title]Time to meet up[\/post_page_title]
\nIf Karen Heiting had felt lonely before, it wasn\u2019t to be the case for long. The extended family agreed to meet up, so they decided to throw a party so that Heiting could come face to face with her relatives.
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\nShe told Twin Cities Press that the party featured all of her cousins and half-brothers, all with name tags explaining how they were related to her. When she saw her half-brothers and how similar they looked to her she was totally overwhelmed.
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\n[post_page_title]A Presidential link[\/post_page_title]
\nJames Pylant is another person who wasn\u2019t expecting to find anything that interesting in an at-home DNA test.
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\nHowever, after taking tests from Ancestry, 23andMe, Family Tree DNA, and MyHeritage, they all came back with some incredible news. His family was related to former President, Abraham Lincoln! Imagine finding that out through an at-home DNA test!
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\n[post_page_title]Not the news she wanted[\/post_page_title]
\nWhen Catherine St Clair sent off her DNA test, she wasn\u2019t expecting anything abnormal. Unfortunately, what she did discover was not happy news.
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\nShe found out that her brother only half matched her DNA, meaning he wasn\u2019t her full brother. In fact, she didn\u2019t genetically match with anybody from her father\u2019s side of the family. The man who raised her was not her biological father. After some searching, she tracked down her real dad; a man her mother had known over 50 years ago.
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\n[post_page_title]Feeling devastated[\/post_page_title]
\nWhen Catherine St Clair first found out that the man who raised her wasn\u2019t her real dad, she felt totally lost. She told The Atlantic that she \u201clooked into a mirror and started crying.\u201d
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\nShe felt as though she didn\u2019t know who she was, after spending her whole life thinking she was half of her mother and half of the man she thought was her father. However, it wasn\u2019t to be all bad news.
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\n[post_page_title]Finding more family[\/post_page_title]
\nWhile St Clair may have felt lost at first, she did find a silver lining.
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\nThrough the AncestryDNA website, she discovered that she had two half-sisters; Raetta and Mona. The three have become close sisters and even flew to Los Angeles together to celebrate Raetta\u2019s birthday. Blood is thicker than water!
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\n[post_page_title]Helping others[\/post_page_title]
\nAfter Catherine St Clair got over the initial shock of her DNA results, she decided to set up a Facebook group to help others who received unexpected news from their tests.
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\nThe group is called DNA NPE Friends, with NPE meaning \u201cnot parent expected.\u201d So far, it has over 1,000 members of people who received unexpected DNA test results.
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\n[post_page_title]Not everyone wants to connect[\/post_page_title]
\nOne member of the group discovered that not everyone wants to find out more about extended family members.
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\nTodd found out about several cousins he had after taking an AncestryDNA test, so thought he would get in touch. Instead of being happy to find new family members, his cousins decided to block him on Facebook instead.
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\n[post_page_title]Looking for someone else[\/post_page_title]
\nAnother member of the group wanted to learn more about her son\u2019s history and discovered something about her own!
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\nLynn decided to order an at-home DNA test for her son, as her husband had been adopted and didn\u2019t have any information about his family. She wanted to find out more about her son\u2019s paternal grandparents but ended up with more than she bargained for.
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\n[post_page_title]Uncle-nephew pair[\/post_page_title]
\nWhen she received the results, she noticed something strange about the results surrounding her brother and son.
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\nThey didn\u2019t look like a typical uncle-nephew pair, meaning that her biological father was not the same as her brother\u2019s. She had grown up thinking that one man was her father, but that wasn\u2019t the case.
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\n[post_page_title]Always felt different[\/post_page_title]
\nLisa, another member of the DNA NPE Friends Facebook group, explained that she always felt different from other members of her family.
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\nShe had darker skin, and her hair was naturally curly and fine. Lisa explained that she spent a lot of time straightening her hair, to look like her relatives. She knew that she had to take an at-home DNA test to confirm her suspicions.
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\n[post_page_title]Getting answers[\/post_page_title]
\nWhen Lisa received her DNA test results back, it told her everything she needed to know. Her father was likely African-American and not the man she grew up with.
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\nShe asked her mother but wasn\u2019t given any answers. Her mom refused to come clean, and Lisa didn\u2019t want to push or upset her parents anymore. How would she find her biological father, however?
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\n[post_page_title]On the hunt[\/post_page_title]
\nUsing the DNA test results, Lisa managed to track down someone who was her biological cousin in California.
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\nThis led her to finding someone she believes is one of her grandparents, but that\u2019s where the road stops. Lisa still hasn\u2019t found her biological father, but she hasn\u2019t stopped searching. One day, she will find him.
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\n[post_page_title]MyHeritage spokesman[\/post_page_title]
\nOne man, who actually works for MyHeritage found something extremely interesting in his DNA results.
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\nRafi Mendelsohn found that he has a famous distant relative – the German composer Felix Mendelssohn. While he may have lost an S from his surname, he has gained an impressive link to his past.
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\n[post_page_title]A strange link[\/post_page_title]
\nDominick Miserandino found a fascinating connection after ordering his DNA test from Ancestry.com.
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\nHe found an eighth cousin through the test, but it was someone he already knew\u2026 His cousin was actually his old babysitter. His search didn\u2019t stop there, however.
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\n[post_page_title]Going international[\/post_page_title]
\nAfter finding one of his cousins, Dominick Miserandino decided to dig a little deeper. His DNA results showed more cousins, most of whom lived in Canada.
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\nHe told Twin Cities Press that he had since taken a trip to Canada to meet his distant relatives and that they all now keep in touch. He explained how they FaceTime and have had great moments together; moments that would never have happened had he not taken a DNA test.
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\n[post_page_title]Finding her father[\/post_page_title]
\nTracy Tennant always believed that the man her mother told her was her father, was indeed her father.
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\nAlthough she had never met him, his name was on her birth certificate, and it\u2019s who her mother had always said her father was. When her mom passed away in 2014, Tracy decided to reach out and try to connect with her long-lost dad.
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\n[post_page_title]Taking the test[\/post_page_title]
\nWhen Tracy Tennant connected with her father, she knew she wanted to take a DNA test to make sure that he definitely was who she thought he was.
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\nThe pair took the test in 2016 but received some shocking results. He wasn\u2019t her father! In fact, her birth father was a married, failed Hollywood actor who had passed away in the 1980s. She also discovered that she had half-sisters, too.
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\n[post_page_title]Solving a 100-year mystery[\/post_page_title]
\nA lot of people decide that they want to take an at-home DNA test just for fun. After all, why wouldn\u2019t you want to learn more about your heritage?
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\nA few years ago, one woman decided to do just that. Alice Collins Plebuch decided to order a DNA test to see what it would bring up. What she found was not quite what she was expecting, however.
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\n[post_page_title]Knowing some results[\/post_page_title]
\nAs Alice Collins Plebuch knew one side of her family quite well, she had an idea what some of her test results would say.
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\nShe had been brought up in an American-Irish Catholic family, and so she expected to see some Irish in her DNA results. However, her father, Jim Collins, had an unclear background. He had been brought up in an orphanage and Plebuch was desperate to know what his side might bring up.
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\n[post_page_title]A mixed heritage[\/post_page_title]
\nAs expected, one half of her DNA results showed Plebuch what she had always known.
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\nHer Irish ancestry was clear from her mixed British Isles DNA, but the other half was a complete shock. The results showed European, Jewish, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern DNA. Alice Collins Plebuch was perplexed.
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\n[post_page_title]Some kind of mistake[\/post_page_title]
\nPlebuch was sure that there had to be some kind of mistake in the DNA results.
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\nShe was so sure that she decided to write to the company who provided the at-home DNA test and complain. They offered for her to take the test again, which Alice and her sister agreed to. Surely this time it would come back with results she was expecting.
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\n[post_page_title]More tests[\/post_page_title]
\nBoth Alice and her sister ordered more tests from 23andMe to try and clear everything up. They wondered if perhaps their mother or grandmother had been in an affair, which would explain the mix-up.
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\nHowever, that didn\u2019t make sense – everyone in the family shared the same features. Their father had to be the missing link. He had been sent to an orphanage with his siblings when his father had died, and he\u2019d never really connected with any extended family.
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\n[post_page_title]Irish blood[\/post_page_title]
\nIt didn\u2019t seem as though the father could be the missing link either. Jim Collins had always been staunchly Irish, and his parents had been Irish immigrants who brought him to the US.
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\nSurely he couldn\u2019t be the Jewish part of their DNA? Alice and her sister convinced her cousins to also get tested, both their mother and their father\u2019s nephews. This way they could see where the unexpected DNA was coming from.
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\n[post_page_title]The same results[\/post_page_title]
\nThe results came back the same as last time; Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, which is from areas such as Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.
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\nCoincidentally, Alice\u2019s brother had also taken an at-home DNA test around the same time and found the same results. Plebuch wasn\u2019t adopted, this was her real heritage. But how could it be?
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\n[post_page_title]The specifics[\/post_page_title]
\nThe family had to look deeper into their genetics to get the answers they were looking for.
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\nGirls receive a \u2018X\u2019 chromosome from each one of their folks, whereas boys\u00a0receive an \u2018X\u2019 and a \u2018Y\u2019 from their mother and father, respectively. When Alice\u2019s brother\u2019s results came back, it showed that his \u2018X\u2019 chromosome was purely Irish. This meant that the Jewish DNA and heritage must have come from their father, Jim Collins.
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\n[post_page_title]What about Jim?[\/post_page_title]
\nWhen the test results came back from Jim Collins\u2019 nephew, Alice Collins Plebuch discovered that her cousin wasn\u2019t her cousin at all – and that Jim\u2019s nephew wasn\u2019t his nephew!
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\nThere was absolutely no genetic overlap, meaning that there was no way Jim could be related to his siblings or parents. While the rest of the family was Irish Catholic, Jim Collins was somehow Jewish.
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\n[post_page_title]A reverse problem[\/post_page_title]
\nAlice decided to do some more digging and searched through the genetic data of 23andMe.
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\nHere she found a seemingly complete stranger who had been matched up as a close relative to her cousin. Plebuch discovered that this woman was experiencing exactly the same problem, but in reverse. She expected to find Jewish DNA but had found some Irish.
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\n[post_page_title]Switched at birth[\/post_page_title]
\nFinally, the answer had been discovered. Jim Collins had been switched at birth! He was born in the same hospital in 1913 as a Jewish family gave birth to their son. Their birth certificates were one number apart and signed by the same doctor\u2026
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\nThis meant that, after some confusion, the Jewish family received an Irish son which they called Philip Benson. And the Irish family received a Jewish son, which they called Jim Collins. Now, the two families consider themselves as one big \u2018swap\u2019 family after solving a 100-year mystery, all thanks to an at-home DNA test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you know where you come from? Do you know what your real heritage is? Do you know how far your family tree goes back? A lot of people think they have an idea about their family history, where they\u2019re from, and what their heritage is. However, thanks to the rise of at-home DNA tests, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":73084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n