DNA Test Helps Mother Reunite With Daughter She Thought Died Nearly 70 Years Ago

Mother, 88, reunited with daughter she was told died at birth 69 years ago

Fox News (by CNN Wire)
December 7, 2018

Since she was just a little girl, Connie Moultroup has had the same Christmas wish every year: to meet her biological mother. This week — after 69 long years — she finally did, all thanks to a DNA ancestry kit.

Genevieve Purinton, now 88, gave birth to Moultroup in 1949 at a hospital in Indiana. When she asked the staff if she could see her baby, they informed her the child had not survived.

“Because she was an unwed mother, she was told that I had died. She continued with her life not knowing I was still alive,” Moultroup told CNN. It was not an uncommon practice at the time, as author Ann Fessler documented in the book “The Girls Who Went Away.”

Moultroup was taken to an orphanage and later adopted by a couple from Santa Barbara, California. But her adoptive parents passed away a few years later, when she was just 5-years-old.

“Her adoptive mother died of cancer, and shortly after, her adoptive father was diagnosed with a heart condition,” Bonnie Chase, Moultroup’s daughter, told CNN.

Moultroup’s adoptive father remarried, Chase said, but the woman ended up being abusive to her new daughter.

“So the whole time, she just wanted to find her actual mother to rescue her from that horrible situation,” Chase said.

After years of searching, Chase decided to give her mother an Ancestry.com DNA testing kit for Christmas last year — and it ended up changing her life. Moultroup says it was the best Christmas present she has ever received.

“It took me a while to use it, but when I finally got the results I went from having only three known relatives (a daughter and two grandchildren), to 1,600 relatives. I was floored,” Moultroup said.

The results led her to a distant cousin. The two connected, and Moultroup began asking her questions about the family tree.

“I told her my mother’s name was Genevieve Purinton, and my cousin said, “Oh, that’s my aunt. And she’s still alive, living on her own,” Moultroup said. “I couldn’t believe it. I was going to meet my mother.”

Moultroup took her mom’s information and sent her a card with contact numbers. On September 8, her mother called.

“I was at church that day, and I never want to leave early, but that day I did. Literally, 20 minutes after getting home, my mother calls,” Moultroup said.

They agreed to meet each other, and on Monday, the two finally reunited at Purinton’s home in a retirement community in Tampa, Florida.

“I met my mother and my cousin in person, and we cried. It was just a crying fest,” Moultroup said. “Not everybody has this kind of outcome when looking for their parents, but I recommend you give it a try, you don’t know what will happen.”

The story doesn’t end there, though. In January, Moultroup plans to meet two half-sisters from her father’s side.

“We knew nothing about our family, it was just us three,” Chase said. “Now through Ancestry, we see we are related to over 4,000 people.”

New York Times
Dec. 9, 2018
By Christina Caron

A DNA test has helped reunite a mother and daughter after nearly 70 years by uncovering a startling secret: A baby girl long thought to be dead was alive, and had been covertly adopted by a family in Southern California that lied about her origins.

Ms. Purinton was 18 and unwed when she became pregnant in her hometown, La Porte, Ind. 

Ms. Purinton eventually learned that the man who fathered her child was married. She left high school as soon as her pregnancy became visible, she said, and received her high school diploma in the mail the same day her daughter was born.

Ms. Purinton said she was alone when she gave birth on May 12, 1949, at a hospital in Gary, Ind., about 30 miles southeast from Chicago.

She never saw the baby.

“I was told it was a girl, but she died,” Ms. Purinton said.

She did not argue or ask to see a death certificate.

“Who at 18 would think about something like that?” she asked.

At that time there was a “huge stigma” about unmarried pregnant women and children born out of wedlock, said Ryan Hanlon, vice president of the National Council for Adoption.

“There was a lot of secrecy around adoption,”

Before being reunited with her daughter, Ms. Purinton thought she was the last surviving member of her immediate family. Her parents and all eight of her siblings had died, and she did not have any children — or so she thought.

When they met for the first time on Dec. 3, the connection “was almost instantaneous,” said Ms. Moultroup.

Seeing her birth mother in person was almost like looking in a mirror, she said.

But the two women had more in common than just appearance: They both love to cook and crochet. 

As they hugged, Ms. Moultroup recalled, her mother looked at her and said, “You’re not dead.”

They both cried.

“It was a bawlfest,” Ms. Moultroup said. “She was so happy to meet me.”

They found each other after Ms. Moultroup took an Ancestry.com DNA test that led her to a cousin, who in turn led Ms. Moultroup to her birth mother.

CeCe Moore, a genetic genealogist and founder of The DNA Detectives, said the two women are “far from alone.”

"Many unscrupulous, cruel individuals fraudulently separated mothers from their children for profit, believing no one would ever discover their crimes,” she said.

Between 1945 and 1973, the year Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, hundreds of thousands of young women were forced to give up their newborn children, Ann Fessler reported in her award-winning book, “The Girls Who Went Away.”

Ms. Purinton said she could not recall the name of the hospital where she had given birth. According to adoption paperwork obtained by Ms. Moultroup, she was delivered at St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital, a Catholic hospital in Gary that no longer exists.

The adoption documents, which Ms. Moultroup retrieved from the adoptions and abandonment unit at the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court in Los Angeles County, showed that a doctor at the hospital had arranged for the adoption.

Within the paperwork she found her mother’s signature.

Ms. Purinton said that she recalled having signed papers at the hospital, but that she assumed they were meant to provide a directive in the event that she died or could no longer care for her daughter. “I had no idea what I signed,” she said.

More than 20 million people have participated in direct-to-consumer DNA testing [such as Ancestry].

“Many of those individuals tested out of simple curiosity about their ethnic origins and were met with an unexpected, often life-changing, surprise when they received their results,” said Ms. Moore, the genetic genealogist.


Questions:
What would you do if you suddenly discovered a new relative?
Would you worry they want part of your inheritance?
Would you feel guilty for what had happened?
Would you be excited to have a new family member?
Would you want to meet them?
Would you look for physical similarities or characteristic traits?
Would it solve some genealogical mysteries for you?