Remember that last installment where I said this story was reminiscent of South Pacific The Musical?
South Pacific actually had a message. One that had nothing to do with hair shampoo or cross dressing stage shows. South Pacific was about acceptance.
It came about that Kendrea, Denise’s daughter, contacted her aunt, Denise’s sister. A sister who never knew Denise existed. From what I hear, the sister/aunt was floored. Happiness abounds as they are in constant contact with each other, trying to navigate this newfound relationship.
Denise’s father is not a fan of this recent turn of events. (One more musical reference, then I’ll quit.)
"You've got to be carefully taught..."
Denise has the sample-extraction part of her DNA test kit. She has not yet tested. It doesn’t really matter as, through her daughter’s DNA, she’s now in contact with her sister. But somehow it does matter. What about other siblings? Cousins? There’s an entire network of people out there who’ve got this connection they never knew existed. What if they’re like me and they want to know? Who’s orbiting the DNA spiral out there that I don’t know about? Who’s that little blip just outside of radar range? Maybe they’re like me and want to decipher their so called 6 degrees? Maybe they simply want to know if their own Enigmatic Uncle Bill has a blip out there?
Using a DNA test feels almost like cheating. After spending so much time and effort trying to find relatives of some of the ‘kids’ who were left behind and thinking I’ve identified them, a DNA test seems too easy. However, I have this persistent feeling that I want to validate the research I’ve done so far. For example, when considering a random child from San Salvador: Did Angela’s father’s last name end with ‘in,’ or is it ‘yn’ as I suspected? Did he really pass away in 1999? Is the person I found her brother? I want to know if I got it right.
My own DNA test – the one I took a few years ago – was through 23andme. At the time I had glanced at the results. They revealed I was a bit of a Neanderthal and that I was related to thousands of people, none of whom stood out. None of these people were weird enough to have a red alert button saying “Serial killer!” or “long lost sibling!” I gave the results a cursory glance, then closed the window. Eventually I tried to access my 23andme account again, but the site had lost my information. There’d been some sort of major security breech. I blew it off.
Now, however, I’m pimpin’ DNA kits to everyone, but I don’t have results myself. This discrepancy must be reconciled. That ancestry site had a major sale on DNA kits and I’m a sucker for a deal. I bought a short stack. Let’s do this thing.
I decided to dress for the occasion.
Trigger warning; If body fluids give you a gag reflex, don’t look at this collage:
My kit is in transit to the lab.
You knew it was coming, right? I’m going back to San Salvador this fall. I also have Mayaguana on my radar. (See the pun there? “Radar”… tracking station humor.)
Who wants to be Arthur Charlton? Or maybe I’ll find Arthur Charlton?
1956. I wonder what that crane is erecting in the background? Photo: Bill Scales
After checking to see if it’s legal to bring these kits across international borders, I’m still confused. It appears to be perfectly ok. As long as I’m not headed to France. (By the way, why are commercial DNA kits illegal in France? What’re them French folk hiding?)
Back to Installment #17
You can keep track of updates and photos, beyond what I post on my site, on my Whatsapp channel “Outermost Uncle“.
If you’d like to email me my address is junkstorecameras@gmail.com
Bwahahahahahahahaha. That’s all.🤣
Hi Marcie
have been following your uncle bill story for some time now, and the DNA reference now strikes a chord with me as Judy and I also tested with 23 & me years back and still get our updates and lists of new DNA relatives for contact purposes. Judy of course is the Genealogist in the family and in 2019 we travelled (argus group in the USA and Genealogy in the UK) Met with her longtime Genealogist friend and fellow researcher in Aberdeen Scotland, who suggested we download our DNA results to enable a wider scope and that researcher uploaded our results to Family Tree DNA. As a disinterested person in all this, it was a jolt later when Judy had a stroke in 2020 and that threw a real problem up as I was quite in the dark as to such research, took quite a while to relay information, keep up with correspondence and make sure memberships were paid. In the process my efforts while well intended introduced much confusion. Judy recovered from the stroke, apart from struggling with Aphasia which continues to the present time. She has all that fine family research in her brain, but the words sometimes just don’t come out as she intended, so sometimes it is 64 questions before we manage to get on the same page.
Judy has a local Genealogy researcher helping and also the Lady in Aberdeen and I thought it would be easy to pick up this genealogy thing and also sort out all the information that still comes in from My Heritage DNA, Family Tree DNA, 23 and me, plus manage Judys Ancestry account. IK inadvertently purchased what I thought was a better access to information membership (more expensive) for Ancestry, but in effect that came in my name, so for 12 months her original Ancestry membership purchased in the UK ran on despite many phone calls to the Australian help section that finally combined the two accounts under her name. That was o.k. till a family member called in and while looking at the extensive work Judy had done on our combined Trees, he suggested that a small change to my initial designation on that tree would mean I could add snippets of family information to my family tree anecdotes, This immediately removed my tree and all the work my wife had done to add information from that combined family tree. Into the ether, and it suits ancestry as I get constant emails from the US Ancestry to return as a member!!
We have made many phone calls to try and get Ancestry to fix this inadvertent error of mine without any success. Moral of the story too many cooks can spoil the broth! One needs to be careful of the advice received and consider before changing anything.
I am sure that you will master the Genealogy thing, I just want to give up and have nothing to do with it after my experiences, it is not as easy as I thought it would be, maybe a male female thing, but very frustrating and many times it seems people jump to conclusions and adopt whole family trees that are generations between when the DNA was possibly exchanged and the whole Genealogy industry works on getting the maximum money return . Our Aberdeen friend suggested that I test with Ancestry recently as that is the largest access database after I had done a YDNA test to try and sort out the mystery who might be my Fathers Father as he was born 13 month after his fathers death (these things happen!!) but I can’t even activate the test procedure as due to my wife’s stroke we have used intermixed emails with ancestry, and as the owner of the test it must be a freshly created email and my old Gmail one apparently won’t do, so I have an Ancestry spit test I can’t activate in front of me.
How life gets complicated!! I am determined to eventually sort this out, but as I get older I hate the challenges we seem to face and technology that just doesn’t make things easier.
Ignore my rantings and just enjoy the experience of your journey into the world of DNA. also enjoy your photography and cameras and have the time of your life. I get your posts on Facebook and enjoy them along with others from the acg argus group.
Always interesting and written well.
Your storytelling is divine! I’m totally invested, and I cannot wait to see the rest of the photos from Mayaguana!
Hey Mayaguana Girl! You and me both! Ha! I’m looking forward to my time on your unique island. Thank you for your comment. -Marcy