I was adopted in the summer of 1973 at the age of 4 along with my brother Carl, who was 5 at the time.  Our adoptive parents, Thomas and Nancy, were in their late 30's and couldn't have children of their own, so off they went to find a kid who needed a family.  I don't know which of us they picked, but social services wouldn't let us be separated because Carl had a bad speech impediment and I was the only one who understood anything he said.  So Nancy and Thomas went through the process and eventually brought us home.  Unfortunately, within a few years they had both passed, Mom from cancer and Daddy from a heart attack about a year later.  But they had enough time to show us that we were special and worthy of love.

Mom and Dad had made arrangements with Mom's brother JC and his wife Ann to ensure that if anything happened to them, we would be taken care of .  So we went to our new home, where our aunt and uncle became mom and dad, and cousin Debra became our new sister.  At some point, I was asking questions about where we came from and we were told that social services had shared that our biological mother lost her kids when she was arrested and sent to prison for child abuse and negligence.  There had been other siblings.  At least a couple of older kids had gone to live with a grandparent, and at least one was younger than us and was also put up for adoption.

This was all I knew for a long time.  Because of what I'd been told, I never really felt the need to know who my biological parents were, but I did feel the need to know my siblings.  Sadly, North Carolina is a sealed adoption record state where you have to get a court order to even get Non Identifying medical history information.   Original birth certificates are removed from the county you're born and kept in a state document repository.  So I went through the steps through the years.  I looked for birth announcements in the newspaper microfilm from the time and place I was from.  I tried to find someone in social services who might have known about us.  I looked through court dockets for any cases that sounded like ours.  And I got nowhere.  For years.

And then I was reading about DNA, specifically Ancestry.com.  I ordered a kit, and submitted it and waited.  I also got a kit for my brother and he submitted that, with my promise that no matter what siblings, half siblings or how many daddies or whatever were found, he would always be my "Real" brother.

One day, I got a notification that my results were available and got online to see who my people were.  I was a bit underwhelmed as the closest matches were a first cousin once removed and a couple of second cousins.  I reached out through Ancestry to one of those second cousin matches and met Shannon.  She no had idea who I might be, or why I was related to her, but she had been fighting the urge to contact me since she saw a new match pop up, and from that moment on, I was a cousin that she loved and would be there for.

Shannon put me in touch with her mother, but she also didn't know anything about me or Carl, or our story that we had.   So I started going through family trees that some of my matches had posted, and comparing shared matches to break the results into a maternal and paternal side, even though I had no idea which was which.  Eventually, I was able to determine that I had one grandparent with last name Savage from a family of 11 children, and one with the last name Teachey from a family of 8 children.  After some more research, the only marriage I could find between those families was one between Carl Teachy and Pearl Savage.

So now I just needed to find one of their children or grandchildren.  None of them were on ancestry.com, but I did find a second cousin who could remember going with their parents to visit Carl and Pearl and he told me that they had 4 children, two boys and two girls.  Remember, at this point I didn't know if I was looking for a mother or a father at this point.  After a couple more days of research and phone calls, I was able to get a number for a granddaughter of Pearl and Carl T.  So I called.  At 10:30pm.  A very deep and burly voice answered, and I stated that I was calling for Sylvia.  The voice responded "What do you want with my wife in the middle of the night?"  So I told him that I believed I was related to her and she might be able to help me find my siblings.  "Oh, ok, here."  Once I started telling her what I knew of our story, she said, "Oh, you must be Randall."  And then she named my siblings.

So now I knew my first cousin.  Within a couple of days I had talked to our oldest brother Johnny who had been taken in by his paternal grandmother, and within a week, I was having dinner at Kings Restaurant in Kinston with Sylvia and Johnny and Carl and my adopted aunt/mom, and my cousin/sister and a couple of nieces.  Unfortunately, our oldest sister, Susan Carol, who had grown up with Johnny at their grandmother's, had died from cancer a few years before I did the dna test, but she had followed most of the same steps I had in trying to find us.  

Knowing my little brother's name, I then updated all my adoption registry listings with that information along with better dates and ages.  But those methods only work if the other party is also looking.

About a year later, Shannon called me one Sunday yelling "Who is this half sibling match on ancestry.com!?"  So I park the truck, log in and see a new match named Charles.  We both send messages on ancestry to him, and I promise to let her know if I get a response.  Only I couldn't just sit around and wait for a message.  I used the people hunting skills I had been developing and had Charles' wife's phone number in about 2 hours, so I called.  Turns out Charles had been adopted by a family who live about 2 hours from where Carl and I grew up.  He was their third adopted child, and had no idea he had biological siblings.  His wife pushed him to do the dna thing to find out about any medical history stuff, so he was a bit overwhelmed to learn about three brothers he never knew he had.  Once he got over the initial shock though, he became a fantastic brother to all of us, and a cousin to Sylvia, and was unofficially readopted by my aunt/mom.   When I'm in town now, I usually make sure to have at least one get together with all my family there and everyone get's along like we've always known each other.

So why did I post this wall of text here?  Partly because I think it's an uplifting story, but also because of posts I see here when ancestry or 23andme or whatever is mentioned.  Many people do these test to find their demographic mix and that's all good.  In my case, none of the people I was looking for had done it, so it was only because other people for other reasons had done so and enabled me to establish the links.  So even if you don't care what percentage Ashkenazi Jew you are, consider that you might be the critical link to someone finding their family and filling a hole in their hearts.

Thanks for reading if you got this far,

Randall and his brothers.

Good story Randall.  Wonderful news.

That was an awesome story. Thank you for sharing it.

Congrats.  Thanks for an enjoyable read too!

Thanks for posting that awesome story.

Pretty cool story

Awesome!
Good for you!

Congrats.  

My wife got pregnant at 15 years old and put her daughter up for adoption.  When we met, the girl would have been about 14.  My wife found her when the girl was in her early 20's.

That daughter just had our first grandchild.

Attached File

Good story

My wife found out about her biological dad. (He is a homeless mental guy)

Gained a bunch of aunts,uncles and cousins that are pretty cool.

Thats great.  Congrats

good story, congrats

Great story, and I'm really happy you were able to locate your siblings.

so what happened to wilma?

Outstanding!  You did good...and have some great siblings.

She died and her obituary described her as a loving mother.

It's an awesome and uplifting story Randall, thank you so much for sharing.  My sisters and I have a similar story, and we knocked ourselves out trying to sort it out with DNA, but in our case it wasn't what solved the mystery.
It makes me sad when I see people who were adopted saying they don't want to know the family that let them go, we were that family and were praying to know our brother.  I understand how often the people on the other end turn out to be liars or deadbeats, but I think more often than not, they're just normal people with big hearts who already love you like they've always known you.

Yeah?

That is a great story. The other side is my Dad has a bunch of kids from before he meet my mom and maybe a few after. Most of them are women. At least one is in Mississippi. 1 is in Florida, 1 Maybe is in Washington state. 1 maybe in NC, A maybe in England from WW2. He was like the Johnny Appleseed of DNA. I am old and really don't have any relatives and really don't want any.

Awesome story , happy you found your people

Thats pretty cool story OP.

Its interesting,  these kind of found family you appreciate more.  Nice story!

Great read and congratulations.
I couldn't stop reading.

Interesting life story.  And this was my favorite part.

For anyone who has a similar story, the Soundex Registry may also help. It is a free mutual consent registry that has been around since 1975. It helped my wife find her birth mother.