A wee while ago I watched an episode of the TV series “DNA Journeys” featuring the actor John Simm. He, along with friend and fellow actor Philip Glenister, took part in the show hoping to explore their family history using their DNA. It’s a fun light-hearted programme which looks for ancestors with interesting or entertaining stories. For Simm it became something quite different when he discovered that his late father was not in fact his biological dad. Bravely, he decided to continue with the show which then focussed on tracking down his biological family. The DNA result came as a complete shock and had a huge impact on the actor and his family.

Such discoveries are not uncommon and is something that should be borne in mind when taking, and especially when gifting, a DNA test. This phenomenon is known as an NPE in genealogy (non-paternity event or not parent expected) and rates of misattributed paternity are estimated to be between 2% and 12%. Sometimes a DNA test might be taken because there are suspicions that this might be the case but even so, the result can still be quite shocking and can make a person question everything they think they know about their family and themselves.

What if an NPE comes to light further back in your tree? Do we have an emotional connections to those past family members that we have never met and who died long before we were born?

I started researching my family history because I wanted to know about my roots. I enjoy history and wanted to know about my family’s part in it. Yes it came about partly because of watching the show “Who Do You Think You Are” and wondering how did the actions and decisions of my ancestors bring me to where I am today? Even as a child though I wanted to make a family tree but I had no idea how to go about it and I didn’t really get any further than my grandparents and a vague idea that my maternal granny’s family came from Ireland.

It has now been ten years since I started and I would say that I most definitely feel connected to the people on my tree. I have tried my best to get to know them and to find out about their lives, the obstacles they faced and their triumphs. From birth, marriage and death records, newspapers, hospital records and Poorhouse ledgers I have managed to get a insight, however small, into their day to day living. And their lives were tough! There have been times I have cried and times when I have laughed but always I want to know more.

So, what happens when an ancestor that I have researched and gotten to know and love turns out not to be an ancestor at all?

There is one branch of the family that just doesn’t show up in my DNA matches. Now I use DNA as a genealogy tool but I don’t have any great knowledge or skill in that field. I have found DNA matches for both my maternal and paternal lines which have proved useful in confirming theories. This one family line, however, just doesn’t jump out. I knew it was possible that there weren’t any matches because the relevant people hadn’t taken a test so I didn’t question it too much. Then, when I did start to have real suspicions I started digging and came up with an alternative theory which made a lot of sense. I wasn’t able to do much more about that until a descendant of my potential ancestor took a test and wasn’t a match proving my theory wrong. I was quite pleased I must admit because it kept my tree intact and I felt that it proved that the original branch, that I am pretty fond of, was the right one.

Then I started seeing more Ancestry family trees featuring this branch so I hoped to see some matching DNA. On Ancestry if you click on a tree owner it will tell you that they are a DNA match and give you the connection or it will tell you that the person is either not a match or has not taken a test. I decided to reach out to some of these tree owners to ask if they had taken a DNA test to see if I could find them among my matches. I also contacted a woman that I had been in touch with some time ago as she was on that branch to find out if she had ever taken a test. She has and we are not a match. I heard from 3 others who had also tested. No matches to me but they do match each other.

These people are not direct descendants of my ancestor but from his siblings or aunts and uncles. My ancestor had just the one child. In fact, he had no children. So somewhere in the past there was a relationship that I know nothing about and a man who is my direct ancestor that I now have to find.

There is still a part of me that hopes I am wrong although the science suggests otherwise. I am not ready to prune the tree and I don’t think I will be for some time. I hope to be able to replace that branch with the real ancestor and find out more about that relationship. There is nothing in my DNA results that is jumping out at me to give me a clue as to who he might have been. The numbers indicate he would have been Irish but had to have been living in Scotland. That doesn’t exactly narrow it down but it is all I’ve got.

I will, of course, update if and when I track him down. In the meantime I am kind of mourning a loss. Is this a normal reaction? I’d love to know if others have had a similar experience in their research.