My Continuing Heritage Search…

Last Fall (2015), I’d contacted GARR (Georgia Adoption Reunion Registry) in an attempt to find out about my personal heritage. I stumbled through the steps GARR requires one to do, got all the paperwork notarized and mailed off. A few things had to be paid for and those were taken care of. The last thing I’d authorized (and paid for) was a records search, because my adoption records had almost no information in them.

My adoption records stated three things, to the best of my knowledge, and that was that my biological mother was the same race and religion as my adoptive parents, and that my biological mother was ‘culturally lower.’  GARR can’t figure out what that means, but i have a few ideas as to what it could be related to. We do need to remember that I was adopted at 3 days old in August of 1962, in Augusta, Georgia.  Finding this lack of information is what lead us to a records search to find names, or anything else that may be of interest.

Shortly after this occurred in December of 2015, I ‘lost’ my phone and went for several months without it.  During this period I’d received no emails and obviously no phone calls and I began to wonder if the trail had dried up. Around April of 2016,  I contacted GARR by email asking about progress and they responded (eventually) telling me they had gotten the records, and found my biological mother!!!!  I was flabbergasted as I read the email, that she was still alive, and that they’d even attempted contact via phone with my biological mother, who told GARR, this wasn’t a good time to talk.

I got my phone back on shortly after this and called Ginny at GARR to talk to her about this, and she told me they were going to send a letter to this woman, apparently asking her to contact them. I was surprised, happy, confused, etc. and ended the call expecting to hear something, anything, soon.

I went another month or so and called again to find that in early June of 2016, GARR had indeed sent this woman a letter, but as of today’s date (August 23, 2016), have not received a response. GARR had told me this letter didn’t contain any information, but instead asked my biological mother to contact GARR. Even without information in the letter, I’m sure she knows what it is all about. Since my main goal was to find my heritage and NOT to meet nor chat with my biological mother, I took another route.

I waited for my birth month (August) to order a DNA test done on myself. From what I can tell by what my adoptive mom knew, and what the lack of response from my biological mother tells me, I’m assuming my biological mother was very young, or perhaps it was a rape/incest type thing. Hard to figure out without any information, so it’s all speculative at this point.

I chose the DNA test by Ancestry.com to take, one because it’s not too expensive, and it’s a test that tracks both parent’s DNA. I already know my biological mother is white (and a Christian) from the scant information on the adoption records, so it’s my Father’s side I’m curious about, in addition to the background of both of my parents. I mailed off my DNA sample on August 9th, and got an email from Ancestry.com on August 11th that they’d received my DNA sample.

Now it’s a waiting game again, as Ancestry.com says to give the results 6-8 weeks for processing, before I find out my heritage. I’m very excited about the results as I’ve been curious most of my life (since I was told at age 7 that I’d been adopted) as to what my heritage is.  I know the heritage of my adoptive family, heck they’re Normans! The family has had genealogy work done, and can trace back to England, France, and Germany. Typical for men from the North I’d say.

What am I? We shall soon see!