 Okay, is it, oh yes, it's working. I think, right, ladies and gentlemen, can you all hear me at the back? No, no, no. It's coming through now. Okay, I just took to find a place where I can actually sit and you can all hear me. Well, hopefully that will do the trick. Is that a little bit better now? Excellent. Okay. I will introduce myself. I'm Morris Leeson. I am a medical doctor, psychiatrist by training, but went into the pharmaceutical industry, was there for a couple of years, started doing genealogy around about 2005 with my dad. And we found DNA in 2008. He did the test. I bought it initially. And then I thought, actually, why don't I give it to my dad as a Christmas present? Because I'm terrible at Christmas presents. And I thought, this is a really easy one. I'll give it to my dad. He's my dad. His wide DNA would have come down to me. So whatever wide DNA signature he has, I'll have no problem. And then I suddenly thought, how do I know he's my dad? No, seriously, how would you know that your parents are your parents? You wouldn't really have any idea, because you could have been swapped at the hospital. You could have been a secret adoption, as many people have been and were. So with a degree of trepidation, I kind of gave him the present and just hoped for the best. And his DNA came back and was a typical Irish DNA. And that was all great. But it wasn't until we did a later test, the autosomal DNA test, and I found that he shared 50% of his DNA with me. I thought, okay, few. At least I've identified one parent. So that's kind of what got me into genetic genealogy. And the topic for today's discussion is solving adoption mysteries in your family tree. Now I think every family tree has an adoption mystery in it. I've got one from 1924. I've got one from 1945. How many other people have an adoption mystery in their family tree? Right. Well, we're looking at at least 50% of the room. So it's a very, very common thing. And it might be that you're adopted yourself. It might be that one of your parents was adopted. It might be your grandparents was adopted. But the great thing is that with DNA, it can actually be a very useful tool to help you some of these adoption mysteries. Now, just to give you an example of the power of DNA. Last year I got an email from this lady's son. And he said, unlike people who are doing their tree out of interest, we have a specific purpose, which is to find out who my mother's birth parents are. And he said, only this year, through DNA, we received a letter my grandmother had written in 1962, which a relative in Australia had kept all these years. So she's also sent photographs of my mother's mother. So at the age of 84, she finally got to see what her mother looked like. And this is the photograph that she received. So what's it like at the age of 84 to see your mother for the first time? Huge amount of emotions, mixed emotions, very strong emotions. You know, it's a great story of reconnection. But the thing is that it brings up a lot of emotions that this particular lady, she said, I buried these emotions years ago. And it was actually very challenging to try and sort through these emotions now at the age of 84. Her mother's name was Phyllis Ina Cartwright. Her DNA match, one of her closest DNA matches is me. So, and they think that I'm on her paternal side. So the solution to the mystery of who was her birth father lies within my family tree. So the two of us are working closely together to try and identify who her birth father was. But she has found through DNA identifying a first cousin in Australia, her birth mother. So that is the power of DNA. And they finish their email by saying, you never know what you will find. And never was a true word said about DNA testing. You might take a DNA test and discover that you were a secret adoption and that genetically you're not related to your parents. You might discover half siblings that you never knew existed, which kind of points the finger at one of your parents. So it does come with a public health warning. And you do have to kind of go into DNA testing with your eyes open. There is a great book about DNA testing written by Richard. Sorry, I just have to make sure I don't face the speaker because then I create lots of feedback. But Richard Hill wrote a great book called Finding Family. And there's a free copy here for anybody who's researching adoption in their family. Anybody want to? Yeah. This lady over here is first. There we go. It's a real page turner. Oh, great. Okay. Well, that will certainly help you because Richard was looking for his father and his mother. And he was able to identify them. And this was in the early days of DNA testing before we have the modern tests. He was doing tests that were looking at five and six markers. We have tests that look at 750,000 markers. So even with that early stage of DNA testing, he was still able to find his family. So I'm sure you'll find it a great read. It's also available on Amazon. So do check it out. Also, the National Adoption Contact Preference Register is something that everybody should sign up to. It's very difficult to know how successful that actually is because they don't publish any metrics or any statistics as far as I'm aware. And that would be something that I think the community would really be interested in finding out. And there's a quote from one of the people that reunited with her birth family. She said, meeting my natural birth father was an amazing, surreal experience, but mostly a happy one. Mostly a happy one. He was thrilled and proud to see the daughter he lost all those years ago. And I was stunned to be standing in front of someone who looked so like me. And that's a very, very common issue with adoptees, that they actually walk through the streets looking at people thinking, does that person look like me? I wonder if that could be my birth mother or my birth father. It's a very, very common experience of adoptees. Now what we'll cover in the presentation today is what to do before you begin DNA testing. What DNA tests you should take and why. We'll look at how to help a mother find her adopted child, just like Filomena. And we'll look at how to find the biological parents and other family members of an adoptee, whether it's yourself, your father, your mother, or your grandparents. Now, before you begin, the three most important questions facing adoptees or even biological parents looking for their adopted children are, how do you identify them? How do you approach them when you find them? And how do you protect yourself and other people from getting hurt? So these are very important questions that you have to give some serious thought to before embarking on this type of journey. And certainly, often people will pursue the identification stage anonymously when they're just using traditional genealogical techniques. They'll do it anonymously and privately, and they'll gather the information first, identify their birth parents or their adopted child, and then decide what to do with the information afterwards. You can't really do that with DNA. DNA makes anonymity a little bit more problematic because if you match someone in the database, they will see that you match them and they will see the likely relationship that they have to you. So if you suddenly discover a half sibling or a half cousin, they will see that relationship in the database. You can disguise your name. You can use a disguised email address 12345 at gmail.com. So there's a degree of anonymity that you can achieve, but it does mean that somebody out there will know that you are a very close match to them and they will be asking questions as well. You also need to be prepared, and that means having your letters written. Write your letter to your birth mother, write your letter to your birth father, and to their subsequent children, your half siblings, and even to their grandchildren. Also, if you're a mother looking for the adopted child, have your letters written to that adopted child. Think about what you'd like to say in advance to his children, her children, or even the adoptive parents that took them in. So this is very, very important, and especially because mixed emotions come up, it's important that you are as prepared as possible to deal with them. And this doesn't just apply to adoptees, it applies to your parents who might have been adopted or grandparents who might have been adopted. Like the 84-year-old lady who connected with her Australian cousin, it awoke a lot of emotions that had been buried for many, many years. It also means that you need to do this within the context of a very supportive network, and that means family, it means friends, support groups, specialist help such as search angels. And Rob Wortham, who's here at the back, is going to talk to us tomorrow about DNA adoption, which is a community in the U.S. that is actively using DNA to solve a lot of these questions. And it'd be great if we could have an Irish branch of that community over here. So this is a much more proactive approach than you would normally have to do if you were just doing a traditional genealogical documentary type of approach. But it's something that you would have to do anyway, so you might as well do it in advance. Be prepared. So what DNA tests and why? I'm going to speak mainly about autosomal DNA and why DNA. We won't mention mitochondrial DNA too much, but it can be useful. But the major ones are autosomal and why DNA? And to do a DNA test, it's really very simple. You just stick one of those cotton swabs in your mouth, or you give a sample of saliva, that goes into a little test tube, that goes off to the lab, and they look at your sample in the lab, they go, oh, blue, it must be royal blood or something. So that then gets processed by the machines. It gets put onto your own personal web page with your personal ID and your username and password. So you've got security and privacy there. But not only that, they compare your DNA results with everybody else's DNA results in the database. And now there's three major companies, Ancestry DNA, 23andMe, Family Tree DNA, and they each have around about 600, 700,000 people in their database. They don't talk to each other, that's why you have to test with all three companies, but these are large databases and they're getting larger all the time. The other thing that the Family Tree DNA certainly allows you to do is to join projects. And certainly on Family Tree DNA, there is the DNA adoption project and Rob is one of the administrators of that particular project. Just to give you an idea of how successful the DNA adoption group in the US are, they are reuniting approximately 125 adoptees with their birth families every year. So that's quite a lot of people who would otherwise perhaps not have connected at all. Let's take a little bit of a closer look at DNA. So the DNA that you sent off in the test tube, when you scraped your cheek, it dislodged some of the cheek cells on the inside of your cheek, and this is one of them. And it consists of these little blue things here, which are the mitochondria. They're like the batteries in the cell. And it consists of this green thing, which is the nucleus, and that contains the chromosomes. Now the mitochondria contain mitochondrial DNA, and the chromosomes, the nucleus rather, contains all the chromosomes. There's 46 chromosomes arranged in 23 chromosome pairs. So you've got two copies of chromosome one. You've got one from your father, one from your mother, two copies of chromosome two, one from the father, one from the mother, and so on. So your father will give you 23, and your mother will give you 23, and they'll unite to make 46 chromosomes altogether. Now the last group here, chromosome pair 23, consists either of an X and an X chromosome, or an X and a Y chromosome. If you have an X and an X chromosome, that determines that you're a woman. If you have an X and a Y chromosome, then you're this stubby little thing over here called Danny DeVito. So those control what gender you're going to be, and it's important because we're going to come back to the X chromosome and the Y chromosome later on. They can be very, very useful in trying to decipher the DNA results. The three main types of DNA tests are the Y DNA test, which takes you back along your father's father's father's line, because you only get Y DNA being passed from father to son, and then to son to son. So if you look at the Y DNA, you got that from your father, he got that from his father, he got that from his father, it will take you back along the father's father's father's line. If you're a male and you're adopted, this is a very good way of finding out what the surname of your biological father is. We'll take a look at that. mitochondrial DNA goes on the other side of the family tree, mother, mother, mother, mother, mother, mother. And that goes all the way back 200,000 years ago to Africa, but it is relatively less useful than the other tests, because on the mother's side, of course, the surname changes with every generation. In the middle then, we have the autosomal DNA, which goes back about five or seven generations, relatively a small distance compared to the Y DNA and the mitochondrial DNA, which can go back thousands of years. But with the autosomal DNA, you only go back about five to seven generations. And that's about the level of your 64 great, great, great, great grandparents who would have been born around about 1765 or so. So that's a summary of the three main types of tests. Now, the Y DNA can identify the surname of the birth father, like I say, and the autosomal DNA can identify the parent whether it's a father or a mother. And we'll take a look at both of those. These are the three commercial companies. These are the sizes of the databases. You'll see that with ancestry DNA, because they don't sell the kit outside of the U.S. 99% of the population are in the U.S., most of my matches are not there. I've also tested with 23andMe. They sell outside of the U.S., but they're mainly U.S. based, so they have about 90% of their databases within the U.S., and only 10% of people in their database are from outside of the U.S. But family tree, on the other hand, has 70% U.S. and 30% non-U.S. And I get most of my matches with family tree DNA. They're the ones downstairs, so you can get your DNA tested today or tomorrow if you come back. Also, they are the only people that come here to actually offer DNA testing to the Irish public. The tests all cost $99, except you have to pay $80 to get 23andMe to send the kit over here. And if you want to get ancestry DNA, you either have to fly over to the States to a friend's apartment, have your swab taken there, and then fly back. Or you have to pay ancestry to send it to your friend, and then he sends it on to you, and then you send it back to him, and then he sends it off to the lab. It's doable, and it's something that you should do if you're adopted and you're thinking of actually fishing in all three pools. But it does mean that there's additional costs on top of the original $99 for the kit. The shipping can be quite expensive. Whatever you do, whether it's ancestry, 23andMe, family tree and DNA, upload your data for free to GetMatch.com. Because two things, it allows you to compare with other people who've tested in other companies who have also uploaded to GetMatch, number one. Number two, there are some additional tools and features on GetMatch that you can't get on the other websites of the other companies, and they can be very, very useful in interpreting your data. Let's start with how to help a mother find her adopted child. And we've all heard the story of Filomena, and I think this movie and the book that was written have really done so much to reactivate and awaken the public's interest in the story of adoptees and the mothers that had to give up their children. And the story, in case you don't know it, is one of Filomena giving her up her child as a young girl, and then 50 years later going searching for him. He, in the meantime, was searching for her. Their paths were crossing, and they never actually met up. They were never actually put in touch with each other. Now, it struck me as I was watching the movie that if her son had done a DNA test and was waiting to see if he had any matches, and then she did a DNA test, that would be an instant match. So within the space of however long it takes to get the results back six to ten weeks, for example, you would have an instant find. The two of them would have been reconnected, and they could have taken it from there. And that's why I would certainly encourage anybody who has given up a child and is thinking that they wanted to reconnect with them. They should really be testing in all three DNA databases in the hope that their adopted child, as many adoptees do, takes an interest in who the original biological parents were and maybe does some research and maybe does a DNA test themselves in the hope that there might be some sort of clue in the DNA. So this could be a really good way of reconnecting with the adopted child. And here we have the birth mother giving a DNA sample to all three testing companies using autosomal DNA. And then the results come back four to ten weeks later. If the child is in the database, that is a 50% match. And it'll actually come back at that and it will estimate the relationship as being parent slash child. Supposing the adopted child has had children of their own and one of those children has taken a DNA test, that too will come up in the database as a grandchild. And if there's other relatives as well, then that probably is the lady's own family tree. It could be the birth father as well. They'll have other relatives in the database, second, third cousins. Just like any of us who are involved in genealogical research will find second to third to fourth to fifth cousins in the database. So it's important to have your letters written and have your support network ready to support you in this journey. And this is the kind of page that you'll get when your autosomal DNA results come back. You won't be able to read everything here, but I put the mum's name up here. This is her name here. And these are her close matches. And you can see here that her closest match is a guy called Morris John Leason, just happens to be my name. And the relationship is parent slash child. So this mother would have connected instantly with her offspring. You can see also that there's a grandparent slash grandchild connection here as well. Now we know it can't be a grandparent because that person would have been dead a long time ago. So what actually is happening here is this woman has not only found her son, but also a grandchild, probably children of the actual child that she gave up for adoption many years ago. She also has a first to second cousin, a second to fourth cousin, and a third to fifth cousin. If she clicks on the person's name, you get this profile including the email address. And you also, if you click on this little icon here, you can send a message also directly. So this is instant connection and instant contact possible with the adopted child and the adopted grandchild. So be prepared. Have your letters written. What do you want to say to your child, your grandchild, the adoptive parents themselves, any of their natural children who might be half siblings to the adopted or the step siblings to the adopted child? And how do you best go about doing it? So these are very, very important questions that you have to think through. Have your support network ready, like I say, many emotions strong and mixed. Everyone will need time to process them and resist being impulsive, sleep on it if you don't know what to do. The answer will come. But supposing your child is not there. If it's not in the day's base, what can you do? Well, your DNA can remain on the database if you want as a kind of a legacy. If your child or any of his or her children do a DNA test in the future, you will come up as one of their close matches. It might be in five years' time. It might be in 50 years' time. But by leaving your DNA data on the database, you're actually leaving a legacy for your child and for the descendants of that child as well. So therefore it's important to fill out the beneficiary information. This is the beneficiary information page on FamilyTreeDNA. I put a false name and number in there. And also on the web page, you could probably leave a link to a blog or some sort of information that you might want to share or a contact information to share with the adoptee as well. So the next question, then, is to how do you find the biological parents or family of an adoptee? And we look at two elements of this, finding the birth father, finding the birth mother. So before you even go down the DNA path, you should also have downloaded some of the adoption tracing guides on the Adoption Rights Alliance website. It has some useful ones. Also, there's information from the Council of Irish Adoption Agency's website for both adopted people, birth parents and adoptive parents. And you should also consider registering, like I say, with the National Adoption Contact Preference Register. And there's some very, very useful links down there just to remind everybody this is being recorded for YouTube. It will be up there in the space of the next couple of weeks. Also on the Genetic Genealogy Ireland blog, I'll be leaving a PDF version of the slides so that you can actually click on any of these links and it'll take you to that website. So check out the Genetic Genealogy Ireland website over the course of the next couple of weeks and you'll see most of these presentations going up there. If you were born after 1952, you can get non-identifying information from the Adoption Agency, although a lot of the time it is really non-identifying misinformation. Sometimes it's falsified, sometimes it's just not accurate at all, and sometimes it takes you off on a wild goose chase. So you do have to be careful about the information you get. You can get your adoption certificate and that will give you your date of birth, plus or minus six weeks in many cases, which means then you can go to the birth register and look for potential illegitimacies. That's very well documented in the Tracing Guides from the Adoption Rights Alliance, and from that you can construct a family tree for your mother and try and identify her that way, eliminating non-contenders along the way, and contacting the most likely candidates, which is a pretty laborious process and very time-intensive. But a lot of people who are searching for their birth family have been researching for decades, so it's something that many people will be familiar with. If you were born before 1952, Fiona Simons has a very useful presentation on the Enna Plan website. It took me a while to be able to download it and view it as a PDF, and I had to save it as HTML and then change the file extension because I think it's a bit corrupted. She also gave a similar presentation yesterday. Was anybody there yesterday at Fiona's presentation? You were there? Yeah, and Rob was there as well. So again, there might be slides available from that presentation. I'm not sure if she made them available beforehand. She might have done this time as well. But Fiona's downstairs with Enna Plan, you can always make those inquiries down there. But if it was an informal adoption, as so many adoptions in the early 1900s were, or if it was a secret adoption or an illegal adoption, then there is no adoption documentation. There are no clues, and DNA might be your only hope of actually finding some kind of answer. So let's look at how we use YDNA to help identify the birth father. Now remember, the YDNA goes back along the father's, father's, father's, father's line. And here is the diagram. If I look at the name, the results of this fictional character, Finn Borough Bryan, whose results bear a striking resemblance to my own, you'll see that when he did a 12 marker test, actually these aren't my own, when he did a 12 marker test, he had eight matches. And those matches were Massey, Massey, Simmons, Massey, Simmons, Massey, Simmons, Massey. Even at 12 markers, you're only getting two surnames that are jumping at you. Let's see what happened when he upgraded the test to a 25 marker test. At 25 markers, he had seven matches. Massey, Massey, Simmons, Simmons, Simmons, Massey, No. And then at 37 markers, he had a Massey, a Simmons, and a Simmons. So what this shows is there is a consistent appearance of only two surnames among his YDNA matches. And it suggests that in this particular instance, the most likely candidate for the birth father would be a man named Simmons or Massey. Now that can be a really good clue when you take it with the non-identifying information, when you maybe look at what their documentary evidence has turned up. And if you saw this and you had Simmons already in your non-identifying information, you would be like, oh my gosh, that's the clue I needed. That's the clue I needed. It takes you and points you in the direction of further documentary research. It's not the be all and the end all, but it does point you in the direction of further documentary research. If you're really, really lucky, one of these people might actually be the birth father. Here's another example of a Mr. Tim Cruz, we'll call him. And he was adopted and he did his YDNA 37 marker test. And it came back with, at 37 markers, it came back with McLaughlin, McMahon, Gleason, Neville, Sykes, Hart and Markham. Well, there's seven matches there. They're all different. I mean, it's nice to actually kind of get a list of surnames that it could be, but it doesn't really tell you very, very much about narrowing it down to a particular surname. It's maybe narrowed it down to a selection that might be useful or might not be. In that kind of situation, let's upgrade the test from 37 markers to 67. And at 67 markers, there's only three matches, Gleason, Gleason, McLaughlin. So in this particular instance, the most likely candidate for the birth father would be a man named Gleason. And that's how the YDNA can at least give you some clues that'll help you in further research. And it's clues that you might have to, they might mean something to you based on the documentary research you've already done, or you might just have to hold those names in your mind in case you come across something in further research. So that's how YDNA can be helpful in identifying potential surnames. Let's look at autosomal DNA and how it can be used to find the birth mother or the birth father, because autosomal DNA can be done by both men and women and it applies to both male ancestors and female ancestors. Here's an adoptee, for example. She sends in a DNA sample to all three testing companies using autosomal DNA, family tree DNA, 23andMe ancestry DNA, and the results come back four to 10 weeks later. If her parent is in the database, it will be a 50% match. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. If her half sibling is in the database, it will come back as a 25% match. It doesn't happen very often, but it happens more frequently than the previous example. If there is another relative in the database, such as a half nephew or a first cousin or a half first cousin or a second or third cousin, then you're into the realm of family tree and trying to build a family tree just like you would do if you were not adopted and it's like most of the genealogists here are doing at the moment with their family trees. So again, it's important to have your letters written, have your support network alerted. If you have an adopted parent, it's slightly more complicated and it's going to be even a little bit more complicated if it's an adopted grandparent. But in this kind of situation, send in the DNA sample again to all three testing companies. Four to ten weeks later, if there's a grandparent in the database, that's a 25% match. And you're the proxy for your parent, so you do the DNA test and your mother is the adopted person, but she's passed away and you're trying to find out where she might have come from. If the grandparent is still alive or has been and has had DNA in the database, that's a 25% match. A half aunt or a half uncle, 12.5% match and other relatives, similar kind of percentages. So again, it's important to have yourself prepared. These are the kind of results that I would get or that you would get if you did an autosomal DNA test. And like I say, once again, if you have the details there of your various matches, but matching with a parent or a child or matching with a half sibling happens relatively frequently, more likely than not, you're going to get further matches down the line. Like a first or a second cousin, which is still relatively close, are much more commonly a distant cousin, second, third, fourth, fifth cousins. So what I'll do is what I do with the autosomal DNA is try and follow a step by step approach to try and have a rational, logical pathway for identifying who the grandparents might be and how you're connected to each of your matches. And I've done a YouTube video about this, which goes into it in a lot more detail. The link is there at the bottom of the page. And the first step, well, I'm going to work you through a fictional simulated example so that you can kind of see those steps one after the other. And this is you say, and I'll use myself as an example, and you've done the test and your list of matches come back and there's a lady in there that you want to contact. So I send an email to her and I say, hello, pink lady who looks like a circle. My name is Sam. I see that we're related genetically. Would you like to explore our connection and see who our common ancestor is? And she writes back and she says, oh, hi, Sam. My name is Liz. I'd love to explore it. I see that we're actually first to second cousins. That's actually really, really close. Let's share trees with each other. Here's mine. And then you write back and say, oh, hi, Liz, that's great. Here's my tree. And that's really nice, Sam, but there's nothing in it. Oh, yes, well, you see, this is my genetic family tree. Now, my genealogical family tree is my adopted parents. And I got brothers and sisters and I got grandparents, you know, and I know all about that, but I'm really only interested in my genetic family tree. And she says, oh, that's really, really interesting. Well, if we are first cousins, then we're probably sharing similar grandparents. And if we're second cousins, then we're probably up here with great grandparents. So it looks like we could have a really good chance of narrowing down our common ancestor and that might help you find out who your birth family is. Well, thanks very much. That sounds really good. Liz, have you tested any of your cousins? And do they match me? And then Liz comes back to me and says, well, it's really interesting you say that because my dad's sister, she has a son. His name is Clint Eastwood. And we call him Dirty Harry. And he's done the test. And let me just check and see if he matches you. No, he's no match. Okay, so he's no match. What does that actually mean? Well, actually, Liz, that's really helpful, because the fact that I don't match your cousin on your father's side means that we cannot be related on that side of the family. So that has been really helpful to eliminate half of the contenders for the common ancestor already. So we're down to 50% of your ancestors. And Liz says, well, that's really great, because that means either it could be my grandparents, my mother's parents, or even their parents. So, well, Liz, are there any other cousins on your mother's side who have tested? No, there aren't. But my mother has a brother and a sister, and the brother has three children. And then I say, well, is it possible that we could actually ask one of those children to do the test? And Liz is thinking, well, they could be your half siblings. Because if it's my grandparents, who are where we have the common connection, then it could very well be my mother's brother or my mother's sister, who's actually your birth father or birth mother. So I'm not sure about asking them. I don't think the boys would do it. But maybe actually, I think Betty might do it. So then I say to Liz, well, do you want me to contact her? Or do you want to contact her yourself? And that's where Liz says, well, can I phone a friend? Can I go 50-50? And I said, no, you can actually ask the audience. So how many people want Liz to actually approach her first cousin? And how many people think that Sam should do it? How many think Sam should do it? Okay, that's one, two, three, four, five, six. How many think that Liz should contact her own first cousin? More people think that Liz should do it. So that's very interesting. That's about 20 people for Liz and about six or seven for Sam. Well, let's go with the majority. And Liz contacts Betty, and she takes her out to Starbucks, and she sits her down, as she has a lovely cup of coffee, and Betty agrees to do the test. Will she be a half sibling? Or will she not? The results come back and she's a second cousin. Okay, hold on. Now, what does that mean? Okay, now we have to work this out. If she's a second cousin, then that means that probably these people here are nowhere near related to Sam. There couldn't be the birth father or the birth mother, because it's too distant. If Betty's a second cousin, then these two are a second cousin. And that means that generation further up would be first cousins rather than parents. So we've kind of ruled out this part of the family. And if they can't be parents, then the relationship level probably isn't here at the grandparents. It's probably a generation further up at one of these great grandparents. So now what we have to do is we have to think, well, do we trace the family of both of these great grand parental couples down to living descendants and try and test them? Or is there another way that we can help identify which of these couples up here are actually the common ancestor? The answer is there is. Sam says to Liz, let's look at our X chromosome. Now, remember, women are X and X. Men are X and Y. And that means that the X chromosome inheritance pathway is slightly different from what you would normally get with just an ordinary chromosome. So Sam and Liz look at their X chromosomes and they match. And Sam says, that's great. Okay, what does that mean? It means Liz, because we have an X chromosome, we're connected via my birth mother, because I would have only got my X chromosome from my mother. I couldn't have got it from my father because I'm a man. My father would have given me a Y chromosome and I had to get my X chromosome from my mother. So the first important thing that this tells me is that we are connected via my birth mother and not my birth father. That's really interesting. And Liz says, wow, it is. It also means that because Liz inherited her two X chromosomes, one from her father, one from her mother, that's out of the family we've already eliminated, so we don't have to go in there into any great detail. But let's look at how that X was transmitted down to Liz from her, the rest of her family. Her mother would have got it from her mother and her father. And her father would have got it from his mother, but would have got a Y from his father. So the X could have come from this couple here. It could have gone down that way to Liz. Also, this person, this female here would have got her X's both from her mother and her father. So in Liz's situation, the X chromosome doesn't help distinguish between these two couples up here as to which is the common ancestral couple. But then Sam turns around to Liz and says, can you check Betty's results and see if we match on her X chromosome? And Liz says, okay. And Sam and Betty match on their X chromosome. And Sam says, that's really interesting because let's look at how Betty got her X chromosome and see if that helps us distinguish between these two common, between these two couples up here that could be the common ancestral couple. Well, Betty got it from one of her X's from her father and one from her mother. Now, her mother isn't shown in this picture because it's only her father's side of the family we're interested in. And that X chromosome from her father was passed down from her mother. Her father, of course, gave this person's father, because he's a boy, would have given him a Y and not an X. So we're looking at the white X's. And then this person would have got their X chromosomes both from the father and the mother. But you'll notice that this couple here have not had anything to do with transmission of that white X chromosome all the way down. So what the X chromosome data is telling us that we've actually narrowed down these two possible contenders to just one. And now we can say that it's probably these two people up here. So Liz says, well, to Sam, it looks like it's these this couple up here. And she said, that's quite interesting. And Sam says, why? And he says, well, because they were doctors from Africa. And they came over in the early 1900s, and they were really famous because they were one of the few doctors from Africa. But it means that there's African DNA being passed down. Excuse me. And Sam says, that's incredible, because I got my DNA results back. And it says that I'm 25% African. And here are Sam's results. You can see that he's 69% European. And he's 26% African. And would that make sense? Well, it would, because if these two people are 100% African, their children are 100% African. Their children, assuming they married a white person, would be 25% African. And that would be, sorry, 100% African. They're 50% African at this generational level, and 25% African here at Sam's generational level. And that's exactly what's reflected in his ethnic makeup. The point of all of this is that there are clues in your DNA that you can use in a logical, progressive, rational way to actually eliminate non-contenders identify who the common ancestors are. Now, the next question is, should we, the next question would be to trace all of the descendants of this particular couple in with the probability that one of their descendants is the birth mother of Sam. So we need to go down one, two generations to actually find the birth mother of Sam. And that requires more documentary work. But at least you've got a starting place that will actually allow you to do genealogical research that will ultimately end up with the discovery of the birth parent. Now, and this is just step three of the process where you can use a variety of different techniques to narrow down the contenders for the common ancestor between you and one of your matches. Working with distant cousins is a lot more difficult. Most of your matches will be distant cousins. I have 360 matches. None of them are close relatives. Only about 10% of them are second to fourth or third to fifth cousins. But the majority are 1575. That's 90% of them are fourth cousins and greater. The trouble with Irish genetic research, of course, is that we can only go back to about 1800 before we hit this massive brick wall. And that's where you have to start working in small groups rather than just one-to-one with your matches. And Rob from DNA adoption will be giving a talk tomorrow afternoon, which will touch on some of the techniques that they've developed in DNA adoption. And like I say, they are working with people. They've got 2,400 members in their group, and they're connecting about 125 adoptees with their birth families every year. They've got a Facebook page. They've run courses as well. I would encourage any of you who want to go down the DNA route to actually take one of their courses, learn to collaborate effectively with many other people. And this will take months, perhaps years of work, but it will actually achieve the goal that you're looking for. And Rob will be telling us about one of his success stories tomorrow. This is an example of one of the tools. I won't go into the detail, but you can see that it is quite detailed. And it takes a while to understand exactly what we're looking at. They've also got K-Works and J-Works, which are Excel-based tools and web-based tools, where you can actually upload all of your matches, conglomerate them all together, and then work with them and manipulate the data. And this is an example from my own family tree. This is my dad here and his first cousin. And these are some of the triangulated groups that they've identified in their, with their match. So we know that anybody who matches dad and his first cousin, they have to lie, lie above the level of their grandparents. So it narrows down the part of the family tree that they're looking for. Trouble is, we hit our wall, hit our heads off this brick wall as we try to grasp the low-hanging fruit. So I think the challenge in Ireland is actually going to be a little bit more difficult than it would be in America where you have large colonial trees that go back many, many years. So DNA may be a useful additional tool. It can cut through all of the red tape in a matter of weeks, but probably not. It may be a quick win, but probably not. It may compromise your anonymity, so you need to safeguard against that. And before doing the tests, you need to prepare yourself. The key to success is effective collaboration, but DNA can identify genuine genetic ancestors, and it can answer questions, possibly some of the most basic questions that any of us could possibly ask, who am I and where do I come from? Thanks very much. Now we're very lucky today to actually have somebody who has had personal success with DNA testing. So could I ask Steve to come up and share with us a few of his experiences? And I'm going to give you the microphone, Steve, and I will get the slides up here on the actual computer. Thanks very much, Moritz. So my name is Steve Forst. As you can tell from my accent, I'm not Irish, at least not recently, but I am an adoptee, and I have utilized many of the techniques that Moritz has mentioned. It's called, yeah, that's very good. I have mentioned already mostly the ones, some of the simple techniques that he's mentioned, certainly not anything so elaborate as the extensive autosomal comparisons he was just talking about. But first I'll just motivate my story for you and run through some of the questions I was facing and why I turned to DNA among other techniques as a means of resolving these questions. So I was born in Ontario, Canada in the late 1970s. I was, as was very common for the time, relinquished at birth and adopted at two months of age. As was also typical for the time, my adopted parents were encouraged to tell me immediately, or at least from the very beginning, that I was adopted and to share everything that they had been told about my origins with me. So this was on the line of the non-identifying information which Moritz has mentioned already. So these included non-identifying profiles of my natural parents. So, for example, my birth mother was from Scotland. She was born in Scotland. Her father was, or sorry, my birth father was an Irish Canadian. They, you know, of course it motivated a little bit of the reason they had chosen adoption. So they were a stable young couple, but not ready for marriage or children. And there was a lot of really tantalizing, specific detail in these non-identifying profiles which allowed you to paint a picture of this family that both of these people came from. But tantalizing the sense that none of it could really be used to pin down any one person. And, of course, as I connected with other adoptees later in life, I began to suspect some of this detail, too, because there's a lot of variable quality in this kind of information. So a little bit about adoption in Canada. Really, there's not much to say here. It was legally formalized in the 1920s. It's very similar to contemporary practice in the US, the UK, and Ireland. So the original birth certificate which was issued upon the birth of the child is sealed upon the completion of the legal adoption. A new birth certificate is issued and in legal terms it's as though that adoptee were born to the adopted parents. So my legal birth certificate, which has my legal name, Stephen Forrest, has my adoptive mother's signature and the number of weeks of pregnancy on it, which is kind of funny. I say historical practice because some of this has changed in recent times. But basically the general principle was that adoptees do have access to non-identifying background information, but as I said, the quality and scope of that information is variable. And the jurisdictions that institute adoption do maintain these passive reunion registries of the sort that Morris was also mentioning. They have successfully united many, many people, but it depends, of course, on both of the parties who are interested in a reunion coming forth. And of course the problem is that it's simply a lot of people. First off, there's a lot of people who just never occur to them or they never hear about the existence of such a registry because the adoption happened. You relinquish a child for adoption. It happens when you're very young. You put it in the back of your mind. Perhaps there's many emotional issues to confront even in thinking about such a thing. And then you'll never place yourself in a situation where you hear about the existence of a service like this. In addition, there are a lot of people who wouldn't mind being found, but will simply never step forward to look themselves. So I had a fairly typical experience in this. I signed up to reunion registries, including the one maintained by my government. I tried some searching on my own from what I knew. Of course, that didn't include names, so it was pretty hard. But there was some details that seemed to me to offer some hope, because they were very specific. Unfortunately, the really good ones were also red herrings. So nothing was happening for me. The registries seemed invisible or starved of resources. The registry I was connected with by my government had this feature where they would search for the other party and try and initiate contact with them and ask if they would consent to a reunion. But the wait time for that was something like in the order of seven to 10 years. So it seemed when you're 18 years old, seven to 10 years is forever, and I was getting quite impatient. So at this point, I was in my late 20s, early 30s. And I also learned that my frustration was shared by many, and that across Canada and in other jurisdictions, there were many campaigns being initiated to open adoption records. So I turned to a new possible resource for showing information about my roots, and in particular, Y chromosome DNA. So I was drawn to DNA for a couple of reasons. First, my adoptive father, who of course doesn't share any Y DNA with me, he tested his own Y DNA to learn about his deeper genealogy. I happened to have also now be married to a geneticist and who we heard speak earlier today. So she certainly inflamed an already existing interest in pursuing my roots. And I read some accounts of male adoptees getting surnames via DNA tests. So I won't belabor this point because Morris has already covered it very well. But essentially, just as I was getting interested in this, the activists who were seeking to open adoption records in my home jurisdiction of Ontario, Canada, succeeded. There were some provisos and caveats on what they got passed. So the name parties could block release of a dinosaur information if they didn't want their names released. So for example, you are a woman who had relinquished a child for adoption and that child wanted to find his or her own original birth registration, then it would be possible for you to prevent him or her from doing so by issuing a preemptive veto. So in the sense that they're open, but they're not guaranteed to be open, in the sense that one has an unqualified right to this information. And as a matter of the way that these documents were collected, unmarried fathers would usually not be named on records because it was the policy when these original birth, this is original birth registration was being made, that if a man was not married to the mother of, if there was a single mother, or if the father of the child was not married to the mother of the child, in the case the mother was married, then that man could almost in no circumstances ever be put down as the father on the birth certificate. So even though we were going to have a chance of seeing this documentation now, there was no guarantee that it was going to tell us all of what we wanted to know and half the story might be missing. So I thought, well, I have an actual alternative resource for completing the missing picture, in particular, because I, in this sense, was lucky enough to be male, I have my YDNA to draw upon. So I had these two methods, neither of which were guaranteed. I like mitigating my risk, so let's do them both together. So I applied for my original birth records as soon as I was legally allowed to, and I ordered a 67 marker DNA test from Family Tree DNA. So these are the actual bottles that I sent. I photographed them for posterity. So these are my results, and these are actually running real results, they didn't anonymize these or anything. So the DNA match results arrived first, and they were pretty definitive. So Maurice has already showed you a few results that looked very much like this, but you can see here that my top three results at genetic distance three, four, and six on 67 markers, all the same last name, Hamilton. And I have, now, at 37 markers, I match a whole bunch more guys named Hamilton, all of whom only happened to test at 37 markers. It so happens that there was a surname project for the surname Hamilton, which encouraged a lot of guys named Hamilton to test. By the weirdest of weird coincidences, the guy who runs that surname project is the second cousin of my adoptive father, which he's related to my adoptive father, but not to me, because he's from a different Hamilton branch with a completely different DNA profile. In any case, the Hamilton cluster, in particular mine, and most others originated in the Scottish lowlands, which is very puzzling to me, because as far as I knew that my natural father's roots were purely Irish. So, but I, of course, I knew that there has been a lot of population exchange across the Irish sea over time, and there's many reasons why it could be that I would have an Irish pedigree, which included a Scottish surname. So, looking on the other prong of my two pronged approach, I applied for my results. I got my results back, and as you can see here, the father's column is entirely blank, as predicted, and I should say now that was not due to any disinterest on his part in having himself put down. That was just the, he was prohibited from doing so. So this mother, so I very quickly, armed with the surname I had from the mother's column, I found the whole bunch of relatives of my natural mother, and in fact my wife helped me. I think she was the first, she had the first successful Google result in that regard. And this man here is actually my mother's father, my maternal grandfather, and he is also a psychiatrist, or was a psychiatrist. He passed away in 2002, so I never, I never knew him. But this was his obituary, which is really the gateway into that whole family for me. So, and I learned from his obituary that his daughter, my natural mother, had also passed away. And I really, all I found in that early phase was obituaries, which allowed me to see a lot about the family, but didn't really give me a whole lot of useful information for contacting living relatives. So, I had an idea here. All of my background information suggested that my natural parents were a pretty strong and stable couple. And it seemed probable that they might have chosen to stay together after, you know, even considering the fact that they had relinquished me. So I thought, what if I combine the mother's name, which is of course her maiden name, that I have in the mother's column, with the surname that I got from my DNA. So I submitted that to Google and I was able to very quickly find the obituary for my natural mother, which gave me the whole picture. And indeed, my natural mother had married my natural father and they had some children together. So, over Christmas of 2009, five years ago this fall, it'll be five years this fall, my I made contact with my natural father via some letters and met him and my two sisters. And I have now successfully traced many, both branches of my eugeniology across Ireland, Scotland and England, and Ireland all the way from Galway, County Clair, Tipperary, Arma, Antrim, and Dublin. And this here is my furthest back male and ancestor, John Hamilton, who died August 23, 1871, native of County Antrim, Ireland. So, and I can say for my father's side, it is very much a story of the Irish diaspora on my paternal side. As far as I can tell, every single one of his ancestors lived in Ireland in 1830. And in 1860, every single one did not. So that's all I wanted to share with you. Thank you very much for your time. Yes, fantastic Stephen, thanks so much for sharing this story with us. But I think it's a wonderful illustration of how you can combine the DNA evidence with the non-identifying information and other documentary evidence, how you're doing Google searches all the time with the help of your way. And it ends up with a success story. Now we do have some time for questions. And when I say we have time for questions, that means we're going to get kicked out of here any second. But I don't want to stop the conversation because I know there's probably going to be a lot of questions. So I'm going to steal this mic, no actually a lot, I'm going to go around with my microphone and I'm going to use this as the one for taking questions from the audience. So we have a lady in here. How did you feel when in that very unmediated way you found that your natural mother had died just by reading something on Google or that you'd found in that way? How did that, how did you process that knowledge? Yeah, it was a blow. I think with getting the birth information, it happened the same day I got my original birth information. And I think I felt very empowered just by having this name. And she was 48 when she died. So it had not occurred to me really. I had been bracing myself for various possibilities. And I would echo to that all of the other things Maury said that it's very good to have a support group. I connected with many other adoptees and parents who have relinquished their children in advance of this whole effort. And I've met others who encounter similar circumstances at the end of their search. But it was a very profound blow. In a sense that the search that I, the thing that I was looking for is something I won't ever have in that respect. But of course there are still, that's something that can be done about that. But for all I know, I've had, other than that, the story of my reunion is very much a wholly positive experience. Any question over here? I have done a DNA test. How do we do it for Ireland? I have a DNA test. So these are American under, clearly it's an advertisement for the American DNA system. How do we do it in Ireland? You'd use the same system because the database is global. So, and like I said, the family tree DNA database, even though all of these companies are American, 23 and me is American. Oh, Ireland's DNA. Yeah, the problem with Ireland's DNA. The adoption society like the AAI and the HSE, they will all recommend either placing a court or there's a place in, I'll talk to my god. Sure, sure. In my, well it's, it's down in the keys. I'm not familiar with it I have to say. But the place in Cork, well any laboratory, whether it's in Ireland or anywhere, the power of the lab is dependent on the size of the database. Because what you want to do is you don't want to just get your own DNA results. Because in and of themselves, your own DNA results tell you really very little. You know, they tell you, oh, your father is probably European. That's great. Your mother's probably European. Well, that doesn't really tell you much. So you have to compare your DNA with everybody else's in the database. And with family tree DNA, 23 and me, ancestry DNA, they have about 600, 700 thousand in the database. So that's why the recommendation from the DNA adoption group would be to test with all three of them so that you're fishing on all three ponds. Now, just doing your own DNA is not really very helpful if there isn't a database to actually upload your DNA into and use that for comparison purposes. Now, Rob, it has something to say about that as well. I just looked up the DNA iron site. They do, from a quick look, I just literally looked it up. They do what's called a sibling shift test. That looks at a very, very, so if you have a sibling, that will show you whether or not you match with the sibling. The problem with that is it looks at a very small number of markers. And I found many people who have taken that test many years ago that used to be the only thing that was available. They'll give you a percentage chance that they're actually your sibling or not. It works perfectly for a paternal paternal. So for your parent, it'll actually work perfectly. It'll tell you definitely you are a match. But for a sibling, you only get a percent chance. And oftentimes that doesn't give you a definite match. If you use one of these all-stominal tests, it will tell you definitely you're going to be 25% of a match. And it will be very clear. We do like 700,000 matches versus siblings, which is probably 100,000. So if you wanted to find out your birth father and obviously you have, you have, okay, you don't have hurt your mother, your birth mother's, oh your birth sister's father. Oh right, okay. So the same mother. So would your mother be prepared to do an autism? No, she wouldn't write. So you're relying on yourself and your sister. Now yourself and your sister share the same birth mother, but you've got a different birth father. You're not sure? Sure. Okay, well probably, I mean Rob, you'd chip in, but I would do an autism and DNA test on yourself and on your sister. Presume, because you share the same birth mother, any matches you have in common have to be on your birth mother's side. Any matches you don't have in common have to be on the other side, whether it's your birth father for your, for your matches or her birth father for her matches. I'm not sure whether or not you would have the same father or you would be able to do it. I'm not sure. If you're an autism, we'll also tell you because you have what's called fully identical. So you'll have portions of your DNA that are identical on both sides. If you have very little of those, then you won't share the same father, but if you have a lot of those, I can't remember the percentage of that part in that, but if you have a lot of those, then that will mean that you share the same birth father. So there is a way of actually finding out whether you have the same birth father or different birth fathers by doing the autism DNA test. Family Finder downstairs is probably the best one to start off with and that would answer some of the questions and Rob and the whole DNA adoption community over in America would be more than happy to lend you support and help them. The good news is the same methodology, wherever you are, just whatever matches you have. And we have a question here from this lady. I was just wondering where are there Australian people in that large group, the American group, would you have a good defense group in Australia? I know that, I know that, yeah. I have, I know my birth father and again, my birth mother is dead, and you wouldn't tell me. So, but relatives say, oh, could it be this person, you know, people who were in the house around the time, people, so we kind of stopped it about six people for them, you know, but one of them, yeah, one of them went to Australia and I just wondered, you know. Do you know, Rob, of hand, if there's many Australians in the DNA adoption group and are there's 2,400 members? Not in the, I'm not sure about in the adoption group, but I know they have some matches in Australia. Yeah, I've tested in Australia as well. Yeah, like I said, 30% of the family treaty in their database is non-US, so outside the US, so that's the best bet for Irish people to actually find connections. And again, of course, a lot of Irish people would have, maybe cousins in the States, and particularly because this was the west of Ireland, I would imagine that maybe there are uncles and cousins. Yeah, absolutely. I've looked at that because I've tested with all three companies, and in actual fact, I don't get many matches at all from Ancestry or 23andMe, it actually is the, so family tree DNA, even though it's database is slightly smaller than the other two, I actually get more matches with family tree DNA. Question here from Theresa. Especially for that lady there, there's a group in Australia called Within These Walls, and they introduced me to FTDNA, and they had a great success there, just like them. I guess you might be interested in contacting them, they're really, really helpful within these walls. Other questions? Yeah, we have a question over here. I was just wondering, is there any figures to see how many people who have tested with Ancestry and say with all three, have uploaded their details onto GED matches? Good question. This lady has an answer to that question. I'll let you tell you, is that I did, anyone who's serious about it, they find these tools. They go to DNA adoption, they go to, did I say, gentlemen, etch them, get them, whatever. Yeah, I mean, I've got them on both, and anyone who's serious about it, what I would like to do, what I would like to see, and there's nothing any of us at this point could do anything about, are the number of people who test with FTDNA, and they spend the money, or Ancestry, and they don't even put down simple, farthest known maternal ancestor. It drives me crazy, because I was able to find somebody because they did that, and the name rang a bell, and I did research on it, and I was able to see where we connected four generations back, just because he had a name. You know, they don't have to do a whole, I mean, I like that they do a family tree, but anyway, that's the work topic. But yeah, a lot of people are serious, we'll do more. Well, it would, in a way, but I would guess that about only 10% of people who test actually upload the data to GED matches. I mean, Rob, do you have a? I'm going to say off the top of my head, that's about the right number. It's about 10% that they do have a large number, but anytime you talk about adoption, whether you're a birth mother, birth father, or the adoptee, we tell them to use GED match also, so certainly do it, upload to GED match, and see, you don't have to go out and buy all three kids at one time, if that's $100 in a pop, start off with one and move on from there. Great. Any other burning questions? We have Pat here in the front, so many of the Irish guys. And I think this might probably be one of the last few questions, because we're well over time now. Just a few points. People should realize adoptees are going to be overrepresented in all the databases, because they're all going to want to join. So you can find an adoptee in the database, who is a very close match to you. I came here last year to this conference, now I haven't given a thought to adoption, get my sample, discover that my closest match was an adoptee. She didn't come under any of the categories that Morris mentioned, she was abandoned as a baby in 1937, and she's still looking for her birth family. And I had to advise her, she's adopted, she didn't reveal this in her family's 3DNA profile. Those of us who've been doing this, we look at these profiles where people say nothing about themselves. Adoptees should say something, I am adopted, I am looking for my birth parents, put that in your family 3DNA profile, and people will be far more likely to help you than if they think you're somebody who just paid the $99 and isn't interested. I don't think she's as close to be related to me as family 3DNA estimates. I think that the estimates of relationship are really biased. My closest match on longest block is a fourth cousin twice removed, estimated to be second to fourth. She's estimated to be second to fourth. I think she'll get a big letdown when she realizes the relationship is a lot more distant than it initially estimated. The other thing I would recommend, pick up the phone and talk to somebody, you get a lot more information than by trading emails back and forth. Unfortunately the system is set up to use the emails for all of the phone numbers. Some great points there. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who will and you say that you're adopted, won't respond to you or react at all. So we do recommend you do them.feat. The first thing you do is just start off a conversation. Feel how they are, but the key is to get the conversation started. And you should be the one asking the question just as much as hoping somebody else will come back to you and start offering. Feel out the person, but then you typically quickly mention you're adopted because you don't want to be lying, but you want to start the conversation up first. Because once you start a conversation, you're more likely to get results of what we found. Great. Well, I think this has been a fantastic session. I have to thank you guys for your contributions, your questions. I have to thank Stephen for actually putting together his own personal experiences, which have been very, very helpful. And it is a great note on which to close the second day of Genetic Genealogy Ireland. And could I ask you to all give a warm round of applause.