DNA Family Secrets: Who is my birth mother?

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Around three-quarters of a million people in the UK are adopted, but before the law changed in 1975, most adoptees never knew the identity of their birth parents.

Margaret was adopted when she was just six months old. She's wondering if analysing her DNA might reveal the truth about her biological family.

My mum and dad tried for family, but it wasn't successful, so they went to see the priest and the priest put them in touch with the adoption agency in Southport.

Southport and Liverpool a lot of Irish ladies came over, for the adoption. So, I've made up this story that she was an Irish lady, she came over had me and probably went back to Ireland.

Margaret is on her way back to the University of Leicester. Turi and our team have been analysing Margaret's DNA to find out about her birth mother's ancestry and attempting to trace her family.

Today she's joined by husband Paul to get her results.

Margaret how are you feeling?

I woke up feeling very excited this morning, you know, I've not known for 67 years, not known and now today I will.

Do you want to head next door and Paul and I will wait for you?

Okay.

Hello.

Come on in, take a seat. It's lovely to see you again how are you doing?
And you, yeah.

Good, okay so what we did was we were taking your DNA and we're analysing it against people in databases that total about 25 million people. So, we're looking for first cousins, second cousins, third cousins, this kind of thing.

So, it's probably going to come as no surprise, but you come back as 93% Irish and you've actually got concentrations in particular parts of Ireland. So, let's have a look, let's show you. So, you actually have concentrations in places like Leitrim, Cavan, and Louth. So, in this kind of area. So, you've got central Ireland here and then you've got Ulster in Northern Ireland. So, definitely your parents are Irish.

So, I know that you were particularly interested in finding your birth mum, now, fortunately for us DNA testing is really popular in Ireland. There's also apparently about 80 million people worldwide who claim Irish ancestry, many of them in areas of parts of the world where DNA testing is also very popular. So, that's what we're looking for and we're trying to home in and see if we can find out who your birth mum is.

We got lucky. So, we found one first cousin, six second cousins, 19 third cousins and we know about this because of how much DNA they share with you, and that led us to your grandparents. So, your grandparents are Margaret and James. So, that led us to concentrate on their daughters and more specifically their youngest daughter Bridget.

So, let's draw you this family tree. So, this is your family tree, so, you've got Margaret and James and they have a daughter Bridget. Bridget has two children and we talked to them. So, her two children they really didn't think that Bridget had any other children and there was this family story that the eldest sister had had an illegitimate child, who had been given up for adoption. Because we wanted to be really sure which one of these two sisters was your mum. So, we took your DNA, we analysed it against Bridget's two children and that gave us our answer. So, your birth mum is Bridget.

So, this would be with her husband, you would come off here with your biological father and you come off there, so, you have got younger half siblings.

Yeah.

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Видео DNA Family Secrets: Who is my birth mother? канала Professor Turi King