When we’re searching for answers, there’s always a possibility that what we find will disappoint us or, at the very least, challenge our beliefs, especially if we’re looking at people’s lives.A few days ago, Reddit userKobk22asked everyone on the platform who had taken an ancestry test to share the family secrets the results had led to, and a lot of people came forward with the confessions they wanted to get off their chests.Some discovered long-lost siblings, and some even learned their entire ethnicity is not what they had imagined it to be!This post may includeaffiliate links.
When we’re searching for answers, there’s always a possibility that what we find will disappoint us or, at the very least, challenge our beliefs, especially if we’re looking at people’s lives.
A few days ago, Reddit userKobk22asked everyone on the platform who had taken an ancestry test to share the family secrets the results had led to, and a lot of people came forward with the confessions they wanted to get off their chests.
Some discovered long-lost siblings, and some even learned their entire ethnicity is not what they had imagined it to be!
This post may includeaffiliate links.
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I was brought up to believe that my two aunties were sisters who lived together after both their husbands died in world war 2,Only one was a blood relative and neither had been married to a man in their lives.
Found out my mom had a twin she never knew about. Turns out my grandparents gave her up for adoption because they couldn’t afford two babies during the Depression. We connected with my aunt last year and she’s literally my mom’s mirror image.
DNA ancestry website told us that my staunch Polish Catholic family were Jewish until (approx) 1939.Not sure if it classes as a family secret, but it sure surprised the s**t out of some of us.
Mine wasn’t a secret exactly. Just a youthful one night stand that had more consequences than my pop’s realized. My half-brother’s mom didn’t math correctly so nobody knew.My new brother is cool as s**t though. It would have been cool if he’d been my big brother growing up but better late than never.
I did one on Ancestry about ten years ago. I found a “1st cousin” who I didn’t recognise. I asked my mum about it, and a few hours later she called me and explained I was donor conceived (s***m donor). So my dad who raised me isn’t my biological father.It hasn’t changed my relationship with my parents at all. I didn’t feel any different than I did before I knew (if anything, it made me feel a bit more special). I reached out to the half-sibling (who had appeared as a 1st cousin as the rough % of shared DNA is the same for both) but he never replied. I expect I have other half-siblings out there, so it will be interesting to see if any pop up on Ancestry in the future!
I was the family secret, my Dad isn’t my ‘Dad’.The man who raised me from birth, who I consider my Dad, bought me an Ancestry DNA test for my birthday last year, as my Mums family has always been quite secretive as to where they’re from. He had done one himself as his father had walked out.When my results came in, a random man came up as a paternal DNA at 50% and my Dad was obviously not a match. Turns out my Mother had an affair 30 years earlier with a Pilot whilst she was a flight attendant. Cliche as it comes.
My grandfather isn’t my grandfather. His neighbor is. And my mom’s childhood best friend is her half sister. They are born within a month of each other and have the same first name. The family pretty much agrees that grandma was salty about something when she named her daughter the same as the neighbor.
Grew up thinking I was japanese and found out my mom was korean. she was born in japan, I have met aunts, uncles and cousins from japan they all have japanese names and 0% japanese dna. my grandma was born in 35 and I dont know where she was born. me and her were very close and she didnt say if she knew she was korean. we DID always have kimchi in the house though.
What about the hundreds of kids that found out they had the same father…most born through IVF…the doctor was using his sperms instead of the bio dad’s, destroying theirs. I might have some details wrong, but…EDIT: Adding this fact from google…As of May 11, 2022, Cline has been confirmed as the biological father of 94 doctor-conceived offspring.And it all came out when one woman submitting DNA to find a possible lost sister. Her DNA matched with numerous half siblings…and research took over. At least the doctor is in prison…I think. 94 kids! Yikes!
Not as scandalous as some of the stories here, but was a big shock to us.My brother did 23andme 3 years ago and randomly got a match to an aunt we had no idea existed. My brother asked who her parents were, but she was adopted in a very closed adoption. 23andme narrowed down that she was a paternal aunt.My dad’s dad was a POS wife beater who abandoned them when my dad was little. My grandma is dead. This surprise aunt was born the same year as my uncle so we knew an affair must have occured. My dad took a 23andme test and verified she is his half sister. But he also got in touch with another family member he lost touch with. A cousin on his dad’s side.The cousin tells my dad that his father is dead and when my dad tells the cousin he has a secret haf sister the cousin says her uncle would neverrrrrrr cheat on his wife and he was an amazing guy. Yeah, right. He brutalized my grandma.My new aunt got ahold of her adoption paperwork and her bio mom remained anonymous, but paperwork said she was very young and that the father of her child was a married man wth a pregnant wife, an alcoholic, violent, and she was scared of him. So she chose to give my aunt up for adoption and never tell the father for her safety. My aunt is still looking for her bio mother.
My great grandparent was adopted and mixed race. We always thought we were just a bunch of white people. Turns out we are a little Asian too.
A family member had [unalived] someone in the 70’s and left behind some DNA. They were able to link him to the crime a few years ago because someone somewhere in the extended family had done one of those tests. He pled guilty and died in prison.
On my mothers Scottish side, the story goes that we have Spanish from survivors of the Armada in our family.Well, I took a DNA test and it’s actually North African. Now we have no idea how someone from North Africa got to Scotland. And they have to have been in the order of my great great grandparents, because the features are still very strong (we look nothing like you’d expect someone from Scotland would look like).We’ll probably never know the real story.
My mom’s grandfather or great-grandfather invented a new identity for himself between New York and Phoenix. DNA found relatives on the east coast that carry the same male line and they have one last name. Relatives in the west have a totally different name. .
My maternal uncle was only a half-sibling to my mom and her twin, my aunt found out in their 70s. My mom was dying of cancer and their older brother had already passed away 10 years prior so we never told my mom because it wouldn’t have changed how my mom loved/thought about her brother so we didn’t see the point of it.
My mom is related to a bootlegger, a horse thief, and someone named Dorkus.
My mom found out that her dad wasn’t her bio dad and it explained A LOT. Funny that my grandmother was SUPER religious, (no cards allowed in her house!) but when her non-bio dad worked for an older man, they lived just down the street from each other. My mom did a dna test that popped up several half siblings and her older sister remembered that last name from when they were kids and living down the street from them and that’s how they made the connection. She reached out to her new found half siblings and they confirmed their dad was her non-bio-dad’s boss and that bosses son was her bio dad.The dark side is her non-bio dad always treated her so badly, yelled at her at 1AM for not doing dishes when her siblings didn’t have to do dishes at all or get yelled at. When she was 15, he kicked her until she was under the kitchen table and later peed blood; she married my dad shortly after turning 16 to get away from it and they were married for 25 years having me and my four siblings and, despite the trauma and stunted emotional maturity, cared for and loved us deeply even if they weren’t perfect.By the time she found out her bio dad had passed, her non-bio dad (whom she knew as dad) had passed, and her mom (my grandmother) had dementia and was in no state to talk about any of this.But it makes me angry that my grandmother never stuck up for my mom, that she didn’t protect her from my non-bio grandfather. It’s obvious to us now that my mom, the youngest, wasn’t supposed to be and they knew the whole time. It definitely fundamentally alters how I think about my grandfather and grandmother now. I mean, even me, I always felt like my cousins got tons of lap time and loving from my grandfather yet one time I criticized or did something to them (who knows what) and he stabbed me in the neck with a plastic fork but fortunately it broke. He made me apologize to light fixtures for leaving them on (nobody else had to) and it was my grandmother who carried me on trips and to baseball games, never him.My mom is very close with her oldest sister and they know all of this and that is a great relationship. Her other two half siblings deny she was ever a***ed and would never accept their super religious mom would have an illegitimate child.Ironically, in some of her final dementia-ridden days, my grandmother would exclaim “Why would [mom’s non bio dad] leave me?!?” And my aunts/uncles,cousins would be like “what is she talking about? He’s been dead 10 years.” While me, my mom, my siblings, and my aunt (her oldest sister) knew exactly what she was talking about but my mom never said a word. It’s my mom’s news to tell and she chooses to say nothing and that’s her choice which we all respect.She now has a very good relationship with the half siblings she met through 23&me and sits on her porch most nights talking to them and that’s super good, makes my heart happy.
A (now ex so there’s that) friend found out from a DNA test she had no Maori blood. Being in NZ this is significant and making that part of her identity- she was gutted. Got the test as a birthday present- from her now ex- girlfriend. At least she knows abit of teo reo now. (Maori language skills).
Turns out we have the Olympic long distance running gene in our family. It allows you to run farther than a majority of the population for longer.
My paternal grandmother’s family.The story my dad has been fed his whole life is that his parents divorced when he was young and his dad took the two boys before family courts were really a thing. He knew he had a half sister who would call the house occasionally and he refused to talk to her.Turns out my grandmother more than likely was put into Witness Protection and no one heard from her since 1970. I met several of my second cousins through Ancestry, though I still haven’t found my dad’s living half sister even though I’d love to connect.Aunt Diane if you’re out there, I’m ready to talk.
That my dad isn’t my biological dad. My mom was born and raised in Oklahoma and my dad was born and raised in Michigan. I currently live in Michigan so I was anticipating seeing at least half my relatives on the DNA website from there. Nope, everyone was from Oklahoma or Texas.Turns out my dad didn’t come into my life until I was 2 years old, moved me from Oklahoma to Michigan where all of his family (now my family) obviously knew I wasn’t his, including my older 2 brothers and sister, and kept the secret until I found out from Ancestry 30 years later.Before I confronted my parents I actually tracked down who my biological dad was. He had no idea about me but did remember my mom. He was a regular customer at her bar. Last year I actually got to meet him, my biological grandpa (which was so cool because I thought all my grandparents were dead), all my aunts and uncles… It turns out I also have a younger sister but I didn’t get to meet her because she was feeling very anxious about it.
I have a new uncle now. Turns out my grandpa had an affair with the neighbour’s wife 65 years ago. My mom grew up living next door to her brother and never knew it until she took the test at age 73.
My great grandfather hooked up with a married woman, who had a child. I found that child’s child through DNA and from the looks of their tree, they don’t know.
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Looking into one’s ancestry can reveal shocking truths, especially when we expect our heritage to align perfectly with our beliefs. This mirrors instances where parents name their children based on cultural assumptions, only to realize those names don’t hold the cultural ties they believed.To understand more about these naming and cultural connections, read about a case that highlights the importance of verifyingcultural authenticity in naming.
Looking into one’s ancestry can reveal shocking truths, especially when we expect our heritage to align perfectly with our beliefs. This mirrors instances where parents name their children based on cultural assumptions, only to realize those names don’t hold the cultural ties they believed.
To understand more about these naming and cultural connections, read about a case that highlights the importance of verifyingcultural authenticity in naming.
The guy who I was led to believe was my great grandfather really wasn’t. My g-grandmother Cecelia had a previous marriage but that guy wasn’t my grandmothers father either. Rather my great grandfather was Cecelia’s divorce lawyer - a guy who was 36 years older than her. My grandmother was conceived about 2 weeks before the divorce was finalized. I guess that’s how my great grandmother paid for her legal representation.
I’m a direct descendant of Vlad III (Vlad the Impaler AKA Dracula).Coincidentally (or maybe not), I have iron deficiency anemia.
My Grandmother’s family was passing. I have African ancestry. I also have relatives who fought in the Revolutionary War in a “Colored” regiment.
That my dad and my aunt have a half-sister living a few hours away. Turns out their dad aka my grandpa obviously had an affair at some point with a woman who lived in the same town that they both grew up in. My dad was not happy to learn this.
My mom is Jewish and her parents hated my dad for not being a Jew. They were so mean to him and the family was pretty much estranged for most of my life.My dad grew up Methodist and his mom and dad went to church pretty religiously on Sundays, especially my grandmother who had a bit of a mysterious past she didn’t like to discuss.Lo and behold my dad did a DNA test after his parents had passed and it came back 50% Jewish! All that time my mom’s parents hated him, he was a Jew after all.We learned after much digging that my grandmother probably grew up Jewish. She was an American citizen but stayed in Eastern Europe for some time in the 1930s. When hitler rose to power, she came back to the states and she gave up her religion (we assume out of fear) and never again spoke of it.
My mom found out her biological father was a close family friend from down the street.
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That my “half"sister isn’t actually my sister. 🙃.
Discovered my great grandfather was involved in a notorious crime, but our family never shared itto us.🙃.
That we have Native ancestry. My grandmother always claimed her own grandmother was Native but she lied all the time so nobody really believed her. Turned out that’s one thing she wasn’t lying about.
Not a DNA website, but as an adult my great grandma got tested to see if she was a candidate to donate a kidney to her brother and found out he was only her half brother. Turns out my great great grandma had a one night stand with a Native American man that she met in a bar while her husband was in the war. And it suddenly made a lot more sense that my grandma was only 4'11 and always had olive skin while the rest of the family was tall and ghostly white.
My mom & dad are related.
Not a secret, but thru 23andMe we found my mom’s biological mom; my mom always knew she was adopted. She was always told her biological father was a jai alai player from basque area in Spain. Turns out it was true! Haven’t been able to find anyone from his side as of yet, but we know he was in Miami late 1963 to early 1964 since my mom was born mid November.I make sure to check my account every few months in case there’s a new match, but nothing so far.
My dad is not my biological father and my biological father is dead and I have a half-sister (in addition to the half sister I grew up with who I thought was my full sister). I was able to confront my mom about this before she died and didn’t really get any closure but at least she knew I knew. My dad does not know and I won’t tell him, what’s the point?
I had a friend find out he had a 27 year old daughter from a college fling that never told him about it, he ended up going to her wedding.
My maternal grandmother had three children with three different men, all of whom were U.S. soldiers while she was living in Europe. She knew the identity of the father of her first child, but he didn’t connect with his biological father until his 30s through a DNA test. The father of her second child was a mystery, she claimed to know who he was, but her story was inconsistent. The father of her third child was the man she eventually married.I took a DNA test out of curiosity and unexpectedly found connections to relatives I didn’t recognize. My grandmother had always insisted on the name of the man she was supposedly engaged to, but after reaching out to various family members, I discovered a different man who seemed to be my grandfather. His name didn’t match the one she had given, and he was at least 15 years older than her. She denies he could be the father, but DNA doesn’t lieWe ultimately decided against testing him because he had a daughter born just a week before my dad, making it highly unlikely that he was the father of her. We didn’t want to disrupt a family over a 50-year-old affair. My dad was interested in the results but wasn’t particularly invested in the outcome.
My cousins dad isn’t his dad. His mom had an affair with some navy a***e a long time ago. He was always kinda the odd ball out in the family. He’s gay and my uncle is a conservative prick, so my uncle was a total dk to my cousin after finding out.Yeah I called my cousin to let him know I loved him regardless of his blood.
My dad is not my sister’s dad. I let her know that we were coming up as only half siblings and we compared cousin notes. Mom’s side cousins matched but not dad’s side. She asked my grandmother and uncle over New Years and they confirmed her dad was someone else, though they don’t know who. She’s 38 and we’ve thought we had the same dad our whole lives.I don’t know if that makes her lucky or not. My dad is a deadbeat a*****e.
My dad’s family are holier than thou right-wing conservatives and there were multiple unplanned pregnancies resulting in adopted kids.
My extremely racist dad had five kids with random black women while still together with my mom. .
Found out I have Jewish ancestry, ironically after I started converting to Judaism.
I worked with a guy whose wife found out her father was not her biological father. The worst part was that both her parents had already passed away. There was nobody that could explain why.Either her mom cheated, or her father was infertile and they willingly had someone else knock her up. But they kept it a secret from literally everyone for the rest of their lives.Her biological half-siblings from the other father were also not aware of her existence until she contacted them. And the biological father is also dead.
Not a family secret but confirmation of a family secret. My great grandfather married his cousin, as a second wife after my grandma was born.Ancestry DNA can’t quite wrap its head around it. It keeps thinking these are 2 different people. It’s not.
That my dad isn’t my biological dad! My mom and dad wanted one more kid, but had trouble so they asked a family friend to be a donor.I was so fixated on the fact that I had a mystery first cousin with a name I had never heard of that I completely missed the fact that my sibling was labeled as a half sibling. I spent almost 24 hours after I got my results messaging this person back and forth trying to figure out which uncle or grandparent had an affair. I even texted this person “I’m 100% sure my dad is my dad” and about cried laughing when I had to take that back like 6 hours later!
My father grew up an only child. We learned through two DNA services (we went for a second opinion) that his father is not biological, so my last name is a ruse. And my father has multiple half siblings.My mom has reached out to the siblings but my dad is almost 70 and doesn’t care at this point, since his family was, to him, who he grew up with and not the blood.
My dad found out that his dad who left the family when he was a kid went off and had another family, found out he has a half sister now. Went to go and meet her and everything.My mum’s mum also had a kid before my mum was born that she put up for adoption and never told my mum about. She ended up contacting her a few years ago and everyone met up, everyone got along well and are still in touch.I’m used to it now, just waiting to find out if I have any other siblings I don’t know about.
My grandfather (dad’s side) had a wife and 3 kids that he abandoned sometime in the 50s. Turns out my dad had siblings after all .
My grandfather was using an alias, had several wives plus other children.
I was told my whole life my great grandmother was full blooded Blackfoot. Took 23 and Me and I have zero percent indigenous blood, but I’m 60% Irish. Also, found out I have a much younger half-sister that is Korean (50%) on Bio fathers side. I assume she is also 50% Irish. Quite the shockers for me.
Not a family secret per se, but my mom hid for 30 years the fact that my twin sister and I weren’t my dad’s (still call him dad and all that, cause he still raised us).Happened to find out through ancestry.com dna testing that I did several years after a 23&me test that had weird results. I chalked it up to maybe a rare mix up, but after some messages from who I now know to be an aunt, I did the second test to clear up. Didn’t match with dad #1 but did match with dad #2’s mother. Kicker was it was right before my 30th birthday 😅The man unfortunately was in an accident about 16 years ago that caused permanent brain damage, he has severe short and long term memory loss, so half the time he can’t remember my or my children’s names, so it’s been fun constantly reminding him of things like that. Years of being able to build a relationship with him was stolen thanks to my dumb mother, lol.
My mom found out in her 60’s, when 23 & Me was first popular, that she had two additional half siblings. She had already grown up knowing two other half siblings.
My grandma had a son in her teenage years who had been given up for adoption. When his daughter found me on 2 different sites, he came to our annual family reunion with his wife. Everyone was a little unsure /weirded out/ scared i got grifted- but most of them came around. He looks like my grandma did and is super nice. He’d been looking for us his whole life; It was really sweet. Problem is, his only living sister, my aunt, hasn’t been willing to accept it- that her mother wasn’t honest. She had a hard time getting past her mom and sister (my mom) and brother dying some time ago. I’m still hoping she comes around to see what a blessing it is to find a new half-brother. He really really wants to meet her before his time is up. Hey Aunt Linda, cousin Katie- you should meet him! Give your family a call.
Found out my aunt is my half-aunt. Didn’t know my grandma had been married to another guy previously to my grandpa!
Finding my half-sister was the best part of 2020, ty ancestrydna.
I have another brother! He’s my dad’s, between my mom and my step-mom. Dad or our grandparents never told us about him. The adoption paperwork came to my grandparents' house while Dad was in Korea. He grew up just the next county over from where I did. I’m looking forward to meeting him someday, he looks a lot like my dad’s side of the family. So he looks more like me than any of the brothers I grew up with. And he and his wife are liberal, too, so that’s just a bonus for both of us living in the south. I have enough family that make holidays weird.
My great-great-grandfather went missing in the early 1930s. There were all these stories about him in the family, if he left willingly or if it was something more sinister. I started doing family genealogy research and I finally broke through on what happened to him. He left Newark and headed West to Hollywood and worked as a tailor. He must have met a woman along the way because he lived with her the next 35 years and married her in Vegas the last two. The unfortunate thing is that he probably left because my great-great-grandmother was most likely suffering from a genetic disease that runs in that part of the family that there wasn’t much info on and hard to diagnose at the time. It would have just looked like she was going crazy. My great-grandfather was the oldest and out of the house at this time with a child of his own, but the youngest was only two. I understand someone feeling overwhelmed in this situation, but I can’t imagine actually leaving people you love like that. And she died about 12 years later.
Me. My birth family had no idea I existed before a biological cousin took the test.
My twin sister and I were adopted and knew we had four half siblings on our mother’s side. Sister did ancestry test on an impulse and found my youngest half sister. None of the siblings had any idea their mother had given birth to twins, the oldest was only four or five years old at the time of our birth.
Had a look on ancestry.com while they had a free trial. Turns out my paternal grandparents share common ancestors. My grandad’s great great great grandparents were also my grandma’s great great grandparents.I imagine this sort of thing happens all the time in places where people didn’t really move around but the ancestors married and lived 200 miles away from where my grandparents did.
Not DNA, but revealed through Ancestry and Trove.At 14, my Dad’s Uncle murdered his 21 year old brother.Family kept it hush hush for 60 odd years, noone alive now had any idea. They’d be mortified we all know.
A paternity test for the state revealed my parents are close enough in relation for it to be detected, like 4th or 5th cousins removed x times idk. I popped out with some sweet-a*s recessive genes that made my brown hair brown eye dad go “is that mine” LOLI don’t know the exact relation because I don’t care because I ain’t doing a genealogy. I go around assuming that most people born/raised in maine from families that have been here for generations are more or less my cousins. There is quite a “family resemblance” in a lot of people I see around here that makes me believe that.
My pop who was born in 1945 always suspected he wasn’t his siblings dad’s son because he treated him really differently when he was younger. A few years ago he did ancestry DNA test and it came back that he had Italian in him (he is English) so now we know his mum had an affair with a Italian soldier during WW2.
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