Foundling cases remain a passion, it really is incredible: a baby left on a doorstep, on a hill or outside a shop, now we can find answers through DNA.
Unusually, on this occasion I am looking for a mother for a client, the Scottish father being known. We have the mother’s name; it’s European, yet DNA tells us the mother was Indian. The child, my client, was happily adopted but questions remain.
Is the mother’s name, given on a baptism certificate, a red herring or is there a clue here?
You can DNA test to reveal the TRUE identity of a great grandparent.
Your great grandfather left on a doorstep – no way to tell who he was? There is a way!
Many don’t realise DNA can unlock family mysteries & rumours of the past, even at a few generations’ distance. If YOU test you can find out if Great Granny really had the aristocratic father that family lore proclaimed…
“My father was famous!“
In one recent case, I constructed a family tree in advance for a supposedly famous father. When the DNA results came in, everything tallied & the rumour was proven to be true.
2024 and 2025: GI TRACE
October 2024 saw me speaking at the GI TRACE conference in Cambridge. Together with writer/researcher Tom Roberts, I spoke about the extraordinary & ultimately successful search for the identity of his grandfather through the use of DNA.
I’ve been involved with this organisation and finding unknown American WW2 fathers for over 30 years.
Pamela Winfield was the original trailblazer & pioneer, whom I was lucky enough to call a friend. She met and married an American GI (stationed in the UK during WW2), and was courageous enough to make a permanent move with him to the USA at the war’s end. Much harder than emigration today, with travel and cost making it effectively a one-way ticket for most in 1945.
Pamela spent so many hours piecing data together and identifying servicemen with very limited information, and without the benefit of any modern technology. In the past, a name and a photograph were often not enough to find a father. Now, thanks to DNA, everything is possible.
I wonder at the photograph first published in Pamela Winfield’s book: Bye Bye Baby. Charles Hathaway: could he be found now..? I’m sure he could!
