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 user Kobk22 asked 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!

#1

My uncle by marriage is 70 years old and due to 23andMe he found out he has 3 brothers and 2 sisters that live 10 miles down the road from him. He also found out his dad wasn’t his biological father. Quite the gut punch to find out at his age.

Image credits: TheDisgruntledGinger

#2

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.

Image credits: Competitive_Fee_5829

#3

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 (sperm 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!

Image credits: Figusto

#4

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.

Image credits: annagrams

#5

My dead drop kick uncle had a secret child that not even his ex wife knew about. Found out last year when my younger cousin did a DNA test and she reached out. She was adopted as a baby and always wanted a big family. Wish granted i guess cause my family is huge and she's invited to all the holidays now!

Image credits: kj_024

#6

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.

Image credits: almostsweet

#7

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.

Image credits: HandsomeDoll

#8

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.

Image credits: whatformdidittake

#9

My mom is related to a bootlegger, a horse thief, and someone named Dorkus.

Image credits: BirdButt88

#10

That my great grandparents on my dads side were straight up kidnapped from a reservation in ND when they were little kids. Turns out my great grandparents on mom's side were also yoiked from their families by the church? Idk, we never found out who stole them as kids, but we did find my extended family. The Sioux are pretty based too, apparently I'm Sioux. Didn't find this out until like 2018 or so, just thought I was dark white dude lmao.

Image credits: SensationalSavior

#11

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.

Image credits: BwahaaaBlast

#12

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.

Image credits: hideNseekKatt

#13

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.

Image credits: ken_chestweasles

#14

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. .

Image credits: ringthrowaway14

#15

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.

Image credits: Status-Escape8389

#16

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.

Image credits: KittensHurrah

#17

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.

Image credits: PanoptiDon

#18

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.

Image credits: custard182

#19

My mom found out her biological father was a close family friend from down the street.

Image credits: Snoregasmz

#20

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.

Image credits: wpstroth

#21

This past year, my family found out that we (47,49,51 and 53) HAVE AN OLDER SISTER!!!

(All story we have since found out)

Turns out my mother (died back in 2008) was r**ed by her highschool boyfriend in the late 50’s. When she found out she was pregnant, she told him. He denied it was his, called her a w**re, then his family sent him to live on the east coast to get away “from it”.

My 18yo mom traveled by bus to another state, stayed with an aunt for a year… had the baby there, gave it up for adoption, then travelled back home.

Her entire life we had no idea. My grandparents (her mom n dad) and my father knew. They kept the secret.

My sister took a DNA test, this lady contacted her that they had a dna match through my mother.

That was last July.

Since then my my sister and I have met her, and we absolutely love her… she looks exactly like our mom, even has similar mannerisms, it’s crazy lol

My dad absolutely adores her and last month he met her for the very first time. They talk on the phone every day now. He is 90 years old and was really deteriorating. Having her come into our lives has completely rejuvenated him. I haven’t seen him this happy in years. And btw, she’s wonderful.

Which is awesome….. because my brother is an a-hole… so I traded him for a new older sister.

Image credits: Derkastan77-2

#22

I helped my child's grandfather obtain the first photo of his mother that he ever saw (he was adopted). The search was greatly aided by AncestryDNA, that's how we were able to confirm the identity of his mother.

Image credits: jasmine_tea_

#23

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.

Image credits: omgidontknowbob

#24

I don’t know if it’s exactly a family secret, but the cold case of missing 9 year old Asha Degree. Almost exactly 25 years ago, she seems to have packed her backpack, left her house at 3:30 am, walked along the road where she was spotted by a couple of people, then disappeared. Very few clues were found, other than when a construction crew dug up her backpack about 1.5 years after her disappearance. The backpack was sealed in two garbage bags and buried over 35 miles away from her house.

The case was recently reopened and a reinvestigation was started. Remember her backpack that was dug up over 23 years ago? They went back and tested the items inside, leading them to a familial DNA link to a completely random family in the area. They served a search warrant in September 2024 and just executed another search warrant last week. They found a car that resembles one that witnesses claimed Asha was pushed into during the reinvestigation. Authorities seem to think two sisters, who were 15 and 16 at the time, may have caused Asha’s death, possibly accidentally, and their father helped them cover up. Text messages were uncovered in the search that are troubling at the very least.

A case that was completely cold now seems to be red hot because a cousin uploaded their DNA to a public web site. And one of the sisters supposedly drunkenly admitted to k***ing Asha at a party just a few years after it happened. Probably a little awkward at the reunion, but cheers to the hope of justice being served for Asha and her family.

Link 1

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Image credits: BiffyMcGillicutty1

#25

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!

Image credits: justmedoubleb

#26

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.

Image credits: AggressiveCommand739

#27

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.

Image credits: Kitchen-Zucchini2057

#28

Back in the late 1950s or early 1960s, my great-aunt moved away to another state with her husband and had a few children with him there. While still living there, she wrote home to say that her 2-year-old son had passed away from meningitis or something along those lines. She eventually moved back with her surviving children and carried on with her life. Decades later, long after she was dead, I was contacted by Cece Moore, an investigative genealogist who was working a cold case, trying to identify a toddler whose body had been pulled from a reservoir by a local fisherman back in the 60s. Turned out to be my aunt's child. His body had been wrapped in a quilt and weighted down so it wouldn't surface. Unlikely that he died from meningitis.

Image credits: sesquipedalianish

#29

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).

Image credits: stormdude28

#30

My grandfather matched with his first grandson that was adopted when my aunt was 15.

He was born in Nevada, adopted in Arizona, and was raised in Utah where my aunt happened to live in the same zip code for the last 25 years.

He met his 32 cousins, his grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents, and entire extended family.

He lives within a 20 min drive of 90% of us.

I just went to their baby shower and it’s been amazing to see that sometimes you have an entire family of well adjusted loving people waiting to meet and know you.

I have a lot of friends who met their adoptive parents and it didn’t turn out so great.

Image credits: Pastywhitebitch

#31

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.

#32

My uncle had a secret child we never knew about. That child, my cousin, had a child. I connected with that child on a DNA site and got to know his mom and she finally learned about her baby's paternal side of the family (as my cousin left the picture as his own dad, my uncle, abandoned/failed to acknowledge him). It's super sad, and I never told anyone in the family what I learned.

#33

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.

#34

My mom & dad are related.

#35

My 2nd cousin(?) (mom's first cousin) had a baby with his high school girlfriend and they gave it up for adoption. Years later she and i match on 23andme but we have one relative in common and i have no clue with side of my family he's on (estranged from father, mother didn't want to know if anything was genetically wrong with her so her DNA wasn't in the system.) And I don't talk to either side of my extended family. The relative in common showed up as her half sibling and my cousin. He wouldn't respond to queries from either of us so it took me years to figure out which side she was on, but once we did, she contacted another relative that popped up for both of us.

Her birth father denied he'd ever had a secret child, but he got into the site himself and it showed him to be her father. The birth father attempted to tell my adopted cousin her father was actually his brother, but we both were like "uh, no."

Eventually I told my mom about what i'd found and explained what was going on. She wasn't surprised her cousin had had a child and then lied about it as she remembered him fairly poorly.

TL;DR - Blew up a long hidden family secret on my mom's cousin's family and helped an adopted woman find her birth family.

After all this, I added my genome to GEDMatch in order to possibly help solve cold cases (i suspect my father's father may have hurt people because he hurt my father and uncle) and announced at Thanksgiving to my mom's family "if any of you killed someone, this is your warning to get the hell out of Dodge." This was right after they found the Golden State Killer through genetic geneology and I work with police evidence, so this is my bag, baby.

TL;DR - I enjoy ruining lives through technology. Unrelated, but I have a lot of Neanderthal DNA and it's a fun fact I like to share. People think I'm weird.

#36

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.

#37

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.

#38

Using a throwaway for this one, since my father knows my normal Reddit account, but my "grandfather" is not my actual biological grandfather.

The "official" story goes like this, according to the family history as kept by my grandmother: My "grandfather" shipped of to Vietnam as a helicopter pilot in 1969. He returned in 1971 to get my grandmother pregnant. My father was born approximately 2 months premature, but he popped out "normal" unlike other premature babies.

Recently, my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia. My father *really* does not want to lose her and is in complete denial of the situation, so us grandkids have had to get her affairs in order, and part of this involved going through some of her older possessions in order to figure out family history and other things.

At the same time, my brother took one of those online DNA tests out of curiosity. It showed that he was a certain percentage of Irish, which was incredibly surprising since we know with nearly 100% certainty that we've never had *any* Irish DNA in the family on any side. On my mother's parents' side, they were English dating back to the *early* 1400s when they came to America in the 1800s. On my grandfather's side they were 100% Russian, and we've even traced the lineage back to when my great great grandfather fled Russia to escape the Soviet revolution down to the original immigration certificates when he came to the US, married a fellow Russian immigrant, and then his son married another Russian immigrant that fled the Soviet Union.

We thought it was a quirk of whatever DNA test he took, down to us all agreeing that the website itself was completely inaccurate. Until we got to the basement of my grandparents' house and found a hope chest that had been sitting locked since the 70s. We broke the lock, and found that it belonged to my grandmother with a ton of info on her college education and family. But on top sat a hat box that we opened to find that it was filled with documents relating to an affair my grandmother had while my "grandfather" was in Vietnam. She was hooking up with an Irish man given his name (Stereotyping I know, but there were also pictures that confirmed he was Irish).

The documents we found were all love letters that they had passed back and forth, with the latest being one that was dated about a month after my "grandfather" got home from Vietnam confirming that they had... copulated with the intention of making a kid. At the time they didn't know, but one of the letters said something like "[Grandfather] has almost certainly been killed in the Viet Nam given the violence that's happening, let's elope and hope he never comes back".

At this point I, and all my siblings, are convinced that my grandfather is not actually our biological grandfather and that he has been kept in the dark this entire time. Maybe he knows, but I doubt it given the fact that he has *never* participated in anything we've done in sorting through our grandmother's affairs. My father being born 2 months premature and popping out "normal" would also explain this. The letters are the only evidence we truly have, but we're all convinced that this DNA test is accurate. It's been 3-ish years and none of us have also taken DNA tests (Me because I'm not giving my DNA to anyone and my other brother because he just "doesn't want to know") so it still could've been a fluke, but those letters... man...

#39

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.

#40

That my "half"sister isn't actually my sister. ????.

#41

Discovered my great grandfather was involved in a notorious crime, but our family never shared itto us.????.

#42

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.

#43

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.

#44

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?

#45

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.

#46

My Grandmother’s family was passing. I have African ancestry. I also have relatives who fought in the Revolutionary War in a “Colored” regiment.

#47

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.

#48

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!

#49

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.

#50

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.

#51

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 lie

We 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.

#52

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 d**k to my cousin after finding out.

Yeah I called my cousin to let him know I loved him regardless of his blood.

#53

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 .

#54

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.

#55

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.

#56

My grandfather was using an alias, had several wives plus other children.

#57

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.

#58

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.

#59

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.

#60

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.

#61

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.

#62

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.

#63

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.

#64

We got a call from a woman searching for her bio father. My sister, who keeps track of our genealogy, figured out that our cousin whom we hadn't been in touch with in years was the most likely father. She was afraid to call him, so I did. He said it was possible, because when he was in Vietnam his wife said she was pregnant and then later said it was a false alarm. They were breaking up at the time so he always wondered if she had actually had the baby and given it up for adoption.

Our cousin and his daughter had a tearful reunion, and later she took care of him as he was dying. After that she found out he wasn't her father at all. It was a different cousin who had died long ago. So I thank the DNA test for giving her a father and giving him a daughter for the brief time they had together.

#65

Found out my aunt is my half-aunt. Didn’t know my grandma had been married to another guy previously to my grandpa!

#66

Finding my half-sister was the best part of 2020, ty ancestrydna.

#67

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.

#68

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" LOL

I 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.

#69

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.

#70

My great grandpa wasn't Mohawk after all, he was Irish. His mother got pregnant unmarried at 16 years old, so she left Ireland and gave birth in Canada. She gave her baby up for adoption, and his adoptive father was Mohawk, adoptive mother was French-Canadian.

There wasn't an ounce of Native American genes in my result, and when my mom asked my grandma, the whole story came out.

#71

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.

#72

Me. My birth family had no idea I existed before a biological cousin took the test.

#73

My dad's family are holier than thou right-wing conservatives and there were multiple unplanned pregnancies resulting in adopted kids.

#74

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.