He may have seen his mother once before, but PJ Holland can’t be sure. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19680 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AgnesMHolland-e1398988404182-216x300.jpg" alt="" width="216" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AgnesMHolland-e1398988404182-216x300.jpg 216w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AgnesMHolland-e1398988404182-768x1067.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AgnesMHolland-e1398988404182-737x1024.jpg 737w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AgnesMHolland-e1398988404182-633x880.jpg 633w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AgnesMHolland-e1398988404182-849x1180.jpg 849w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AgnesMHolland-e1398988404182.jpg 1270w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 216px) 100vw, 216px" /> 
It’s a fleeting memory, one of his first. He would have been two or three at the time. He remembers watching two women crying and hugging each other near his room. He thinks one of the women was his mother. He remembers seeing the two women hold each other, and then they were gone.
So the first time PJ Holland saw his mother’s face, it was in a photograph. It was this August. He was 80.
The old black and white image of his mother had been taken long before his birth and he saw it for the first time only after spending decades looking for her. He, and his niece Marilyn Souders, would never have found his mother if it hadn’t been for 23andMe.
“One day I logged into his account and it said, ‘You have a match,’” said Marilyn, whose family took PJ in when he was 19, and made him one of their own.
“We spent so long looking,” said Marilyn.
PJ’s story came to us from<a href="http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/p/about-me.html"> CeCe Moore</a>. CeCe wrote about PJ<a href="http://adoptiondna.blogspot.com/2013/10/pj-hollands-dna-journey-to-find-his.html"> here</a>. A Dallas TV station broadcast his story, and that in turn got picked up nationally. It’s easy to see why.
PJ’s early life reads like a Charles Dickens novel. His mother, Agnes, grew up in South Dakota, got pregnant out of wedlock, and moved to Kentucky to have her son. She didn’t have the means to raise him herself and put him in an orphanage run by nuns. She hoped a good Catholic family would adopt him. She’d gotten a job in the laundry there so she could be near him, and would visit him regularly. But after a while an administrator stopped her from visiting because every time she left he would cry.
PJ and his niece Marilyn pieced some of his story together after years of collecting bits and pieces of information. Many, many years ago Marilyn had even gone so far as to organize a reunion of women who worked at the hospital where he was born. Although they had PJ’s mother’s name and were able to find some of those small details of his early life, Marilyn and PJ never were able to find his mother.
Marilyn even went so far as to send out letters to everyone with his godmother’s name who lived in Ohio, only to find out that she had died in 1935. Marilyn found his godfather, but he turned out to simply be the attending physician at the hospital where PJ was delivered.
“I tried so hard,” said Marilyn.
Then one day she logged onto PJ’s 23andMe account.
&#8220;This big pop-up comes on and said, &#8216;You have a first cousin match,&#8217; and I&#8217;m like, &#8216;Oh my God! I can&#8217;t believe this!'&#8221;
The match was with Cathryn Mudon, a 30-something aspiring actress in New York, who was identified by 23andMe as PJ’s, first or second cousin. (She is a first cousin once removed, meaning her father is PJ’s first cousin.)
Cathryn, who’d tested for health reasons after reading about Angelina Jolie’s breast cancer scare, didn’t quite get that this was a momentous connection for PJ.
<div id="attachment_19681" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19681" class="wp-image-19681 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JohnMudonPJHolland-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JohnMudonPJHolland-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JohnMudonPJHolland.jpg 400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />PJ, left, and his new found first cousin John Mudon.</div>
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t understand the magnitude of it.  I was like, &#8216;Oh cool. Neat to meet you.&#8217; It&#8217;s such a distant generation that I didn&#8217;t think much of it,&#8221; Mudon told the Dallas TV station that covered his story. &#8220;And (Marilyn) was like, &#8216;You don&#8217;t understand. We&#8217;ve been searching for Agnes since 1970.&#8221;
It really went back much, much farther than that.
PJ had been looking his whole life. He was one of the few Depression era kids at the orphanage who didn’t get adopted. Many of them had been deposited in the orphanage because their families had fallen on hard times and simply couldn’t afford to care for them, but they sometimes visited.
On what the orphanage called “People’s Day,” relatives would come and see the children.
&#8220;All the orphans had people visit them on &#8216;people’s day&#8217; except me, because there were no relatives,&#8221; PJ said.
By 12, considered too old to be adopted, PJ been sent to work as a farmhand, but he ran away and hid in the convent. They let him work there until he left at 16, when he lied about his age so he could join the Army. When he got out the Army, it was Marilyn’s family who took him in. They helped the then 19 year-old get a high school education and a job.
PJ’s life has been anything but tragic. He did find a family who cared about him. Marilyn knew him as “Uncle PJ.” He traveled the world, met and married a beautiful woman, the artist<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilma_G._Holland"> Vilma Isabel Gonzalez Cordova Holland,</a> and succeeded in his career. But even after he retired and neared his 80s, PJ longed to find his mother.
Within a few hours of connecting with Cathryn through 23andMe, Marilyn talked to her on the phone. PJ eventually connected with Cathryn’s father, John, PJ’s first cousin. Cathryn and her father then made arrangements to visit PJ in Texas, bringing with them photos of his mother, but also of her brothers, sisters, and his grandparents.
<div id="attachment_19677" style="width: 249px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19677" class="wp-image-19677 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PJ_1949-239x300.jpg" alt="" width="239" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PJ_1949-239x300.jpg 239w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PJ_1949-768x962.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PJ_1949-817x1024.jpg 817w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PJ_1949-702x880.jpg 702w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PJ_1949-942x1180.jpg 942w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PJ_1949-scaled.jpg 2043w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 239px) 100vw, 239px" />PJ in his Army uniform in 1949.</div>
When John first saw PJ in the airport he said he immediately saw the family resemblance. PJ saw more photos of his mother, Agnes, most of them for the first time. He also heard a little bit about her from John. The family hadn’t known about the pregnancy, and after leaving South Dakota, Agnes never went back. She became estranged from her family, periodically sending letters to her youngest sister Hazel, John’s mother.
There are still gaps in the story that PJ would like to fill. For one, they know that his mother moved to Cincinnati and may have worked at a school. She died in 1989. They found the apartment where she used to live and the church she attended, but Marilyn said they’ve been unable to find out more.
They still hope that PJ’s story might prompt someone to come forward who remembered Agnes and give them more information about her life.
“But we would have never found her without 23andMe,” she said.
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

23andMe Helps Man Find Family

An adoptee, Cody Harden turned to 23andMe to search for medical information. Little did he know that in his search he’d find more than just data about his health, he found family. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19653 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Cody-Hardens-Photo-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Cody-Hardens-Photo-200x300.jpg 200w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Cody-Hardens-Photo.jpg 427w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" /> 
Cody, a 39-year-old software systems specialist, hadn’t tested with the intent of trying to find his biological family. It just happened.
“I had a great life and my adoptive parents were wonderful,” he said. “I didn’t know the circumstances of my adoption, why I was given up, so I didn’t know if it was good or bad. I   didn’t really care to find my relatives.”
His search had really been about his health and wanting to learn about what, if any, genetic risks he had. So when he discovered that 23andMe had matched him to potential distant cousins, his reaction was lukewarm.
“I thought that was neat, but it was more of a novelty than anything else,” Cody said.
A little later, 23andMe matched him with someone that could be a fourth cousin. That caught his attention. He connected with his fourth cousin through 23andMe. The cousin didn’t know where Cody fit into the family but decided to start digging around.
“That kind of got the ball rolling, and eventually there was a second cousin, and poof! There’s the family,” he said.
His excitement grew as he got closer and closer to tracking down his half-siblings and parents. He learned that his father was fifteen and his mother only fourteen when they’d had him.
“They really didn’t talk about it for the next forty years,” Cody said.
He also grew more apprehensive.
“Are there going to be hard feelings? Did I ruin someone’s life?” he wondered. “Would they resent me?”
Then last spring he talked to his birth father for the first time, who encouraged him to contact his birth mother. It took a bit more work to track her down, but he eventually found and contacted her.
“I could tell she was so nervous and excited,” Cody said. “I felt for her.”
He discovered he’d grown up only 45 minutes away from her and his half brother.
“What a trip,” he said.
Cody says he felt an instant connection when meeting his half brothers and parents for the first time.
“In the last few months I learned a lot about genetics,” he said. “Personalities are just as much inherited as they are how you grew up.”
He looks more like his mother, he says, but he’s inherited his father’s outgoing, prankster personality.
He’s since visited with his half brother on his mother’s side several times, as he lives closer than his father and his father’s son. He keeps in touch with both sides by phone and intends on keeping up with that connection.
Still, it’s amazing to him to think that just last year, he had no idea who any of these people were.
“This is all really new to me,” Cody says. “It’s exciting to know that I’ve got half-brothers here and there, and I’ll try to make the most of it with whatever time I have left.”
Results not typical. Results vary due to unique differences in each individual’s DNA. On average, users receive at least one or two results that may help with proactively managing health.  23andMe’s services are not a substitute for professional medical or diagnostic advice.

An Unexpected Discovery

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-17116" alt="Virginia Hughes" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Virginia-Hughes-300x173.jpg" width="300" height="173" />
As we’ve seen in many of the stories we’ve featured here about customers finding unknown family or uncovering family secrets using DNA testing, it can lead into unexpected territory. Even in the happiest of endings – <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-customer-stories/sister-connect-with-23andme/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">siblings meeting </a>each other for the first time, sons finding their mothers and daughters learning about their real fathers – it’s almost always complicated.
As Tolstoy so long ago said in the opening of his epic Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Virginia writes about Cheryl, a woman in her 60s whose family is equally unique in its sad history. But the story is more than just about Cheryl’s search – along with 23andMe, Cheryl used a number of resources from public records to DNA testing to even “search angels” to assist her– Virginia uses the story as a way to discuss such issues as privacy and even personal identity.
The story called “Uprooted” appears in Matter, an online long-form journalism publication specializing in stories about science, medicine and technology. (It’s 99 cents to see the whole piece.)

It’s Complicated

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-19265 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1707" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-768x512.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-880x587.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-1180x787.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />
Mike Lattimore felt a mix of anxiety and dread about visiting Africa, so fraught it was with the scars of slavery.
But standing on the shores of what is known as the “Slave River” near the Cape Coast of Ghana, where men and women were once bathed before they were sold into slavery, Mike felt a sense of peace instead of horror.
“We had a ritual,” he said.
In his journey to explore his ancestry, Mike, a 57-year-old who lectures on cyber security, turned to 23andMe’s genetic testing to guide the way.
Using 23andMe’s ancestry tools, Mike learned more about his mixed heritage rooted in both Africa and Russia. The information has filled in big gaps in his family history and helped Mike add more pages to what he likes to call “The One Story” tracing back the lives of his ancestors.
“23and me pointed me in the right direction in terms of knowing which records to sift through, which direction to go,” he said.
Standing there with other African Americans, Mike felt he was answering the prayers of his ancestors, a plea that their children and children’s children would be better off than they were. He saw evidence of that answered prayer in his own life – his family, his job and the things he’d achieved–and in the fact that he was able to return to tell the story of what had happened there.
<div id="attachment_19260" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19260" class="size-medium wp-image-19260" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-300x200.jpg" alt="A photo of Mike's mother in front of some art from Africa." width="300" height="200" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-768x512.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-880x587.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-1180x787.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />A photo of Mike&#8217;s mother in front of some art from Africa.</div>
“It was a powerful and healing experience,” he said. “Good indeed did come out of that story. Light came out of the darkness of what happened there.”
His results from 23andMe didn’t just point him to Africa, but to his European ancestry and it reminded him of the interconnections of all people.
With his results he knew that his ancestors were likely from West Africa, but here was more than the science pointing him in that direction. When he walked among the Fante people he was overcome with a strong sense of kinship. They had the same orientation toward the water and fishing his own family had.
“I was struck by the people, there was something about the music and the energy it just felt right,” he said.
He knows that his E1a haplogroup points to ancestry in West Africa, but beyond the test results, Mike felt something deeper. He felt he was one of them.
The journey back to Africa capped a more than ten-year quest to discovery his ancestry, a hunt that included finding birth and death certificates in a rural town in Kentucky, contacts in Newfoundland and a convent in Baltimore.
The results from 23andMe also linked him to his mixed ancestry, one that is rooted in Africa, but includes both Jewish and, surprisingly to him, Scandinavian ancestry.
“My ancestors came from disparate places on the planet but all have lived the story of the struggle to seek a better life,” Mike said. “When I think about it, it gives me goose bumps because I am the sum total of all that they were, and now, I am the keeper of the memory.”
Some of that history Mike had heard from his own father. He heard about his great grandfather, Rush Green, who’d been owned by a man named Miller. Upon gaining his freedom his grandfather took the name “Green,” because he liked it.
“He told Papa, ‘a man has got the right to name his-self.’”
In his chronicling of his “One Story,” Mike has found his great grandfather’s grave in Paducah Kentucky, an “Aunt Minnie,” born in Russia whose native language was Yiddish, and records of his mother’s life being raised by the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an order of black Catholic nuns in Baltimore. He found records of his grandmother, Mary Brace, a white Canadian woman who had to give up his mother for adoption.
Through 23andMe he’s found relatives he didn’t know he had and he continues to fill in more pages of his family history.
“I strongly feel that we should invest in finding our ancestry because it really helps us as human beings not only to have a legacy that we can pass down but also to help with the healing,” Mike said. “Our country has experienced a great rift in that we have never fully investigated what happened. You’ve got to know where you’ve been so that you know where you’re going.”
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

The Keeper Of Memory

Editor&#8217;s note: Alice dropped us a line to update us on her story. 
&#8220;23andme has helped me AGAIN with my ongoing search! If you&#8217;ll remember I&#8217;m adopted and found my bio mom via information I got from the 23andme test &#8211; but when I found my bio dad, it turns out HE was adopted too! Now I am on the trail of my father&#8217;s biological father.&#8221; 
Alice Toler is an accomplished artist and writer, but she calls herself a nerd of sorts. 
Really more than that – for most of her life Alice has felt disconnected from others, more like “an alien.”
“My mind doesn&#8217;t seem to work like other people&#8217;s,” Alice said. “Throughout my life I felt a little bit like I’d been beamed down from some other place. I later learned that a lot of adoptees feel like that – disconnected from others in some way.”
<div id="attachment_19163" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19163" class="size-medium wp-image-19163" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-300x224.jpg" alt="Alice at 7 with a photo of her biological dad at the same age." width="300" height="224" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-300x224.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-768x574.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-1024x765.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-880x657.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-1180x881.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Alice at 7 with a photo of her biological dad at the same age.</div>
That feeling changed a bit recently when she met her birth mother for the first time with the help of 23andMe and a lot of detective work of her own.
So perhaps it was appropriate that Alice met her mother for the first time in the otherworldly landscape of the Black Rock desert in Nevada. For a week each year, this wasteland hosts an “ephemeral city” of tens of thousands of unconventional thinkers at the annual Burning Man festival, where West-coast tech gurus and professional engineers meet hippies and alien abductees to create some of the most ambitious interactive art on the planet. Though off-season and empty of revelers during their day spent there, the open desert provided a fittingly uncanny backdrop for the first intense exchange of information between a woman and her child, separated at birth.
“The experience was surreal,” Alice said. “She was so happy to meet me, and she has a friendly dorkiness to her that suddenly opened a window of understanding onto my own dorky personality. We are nerds together!”
The story of how Alice found her mother is long and complicated, involving decades of on-again and off-again searching. But her big break came after finding a distant cousin through 23andMe.
Although she was adopted by a British couple in the Bahamas, she turns out to have genetic family roots in New Mexico and also discovered she has Native American ancestry. Finding her birth mother and then her birth father, and learning about her ancestry, grounded her in a way she never thought possible.
“I went from having no information at all, to finding out that I have extensive recorded family lines on my mother&#8217;s side–in fact, my grandmother&#8217;s family is recorded all the way back to the Spanish conquistadors,” Alice said.
And her life is richer, she said.
“Most people only have two parents and two ancestral lines,” she said. “I have four parents, more cousins (both adoptive and genetic) than I can count, ancestral lines documented back hundreds of years, AND the challenge of a new mystery to solve. I am truly lucky.”

Connecting With The Past

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-18559 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1704" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-768x511.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-880x586.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-1180x785.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Greta had given up on ever finding her mother.
From her adoption papers she had a name, Carolyn Palmer, but decades of searching never got her any closer to finding the woman who gave birth to her, or any other blood relative for that matter.
“My missing family history amounted to a million missing pieces that left me feeling vulnerable and disconnected,” she said.
So by the time she joined 23andMe it wasn’t really about finding family members, she just wanted to learn a little bit more about herself.
That all changed earlier this year when Greta got an email from another 23andMe member.
“&#8217;I am new to this <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">DNA relative finder</a> website, but it seems we are first cousins! This is a pretty neat discovery,&#8217;” said an email from her new-found cousin Laura Oliver.
Greta was stunned. It was her first contact with a blood relative.
Greta and Laura exchanged emails and then Laura mentioned her grandparents names, Thomas and Sadie Palmer.
“I gasped in disbelief as I realized that, for the first time in my life, I was hearing from such a close relative. In that initial email she also told me that she was the grand-daughter of Thomas and Sadie Palmer. My biological mother’s name was Carolyn Palmer. I began to cry,” Greta said. 
<iframe loading="lazy" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/3GXYC5r1H9U?rel=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Then the bitter pain of learning that she was just a few months too late to meet her mother, who had died less than a year before.
“But you have a sister who is still alive,” Laura told Greta.
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“The words still take my breath away. Laura went on to tell me that my living sister’s name was Stacy Arena and that she was “so beautiful.”
Unbeknownst to Greta, Stacy had been searching too.   It was just that Stacy didn’t know where to start looking. More than 20 years ago, after Stacy’s older sister died in an accident, her mother told her that she had a sister, whom her mother had given up for adoption at birth.
But her mother had told her nothing more and wouldn&#8217;t speak about it. So for Stacy, all she had were questions. Who was her older sister?   What did she look like? Where was she?
Ever since then Stacy would wonder whether she was passing her sister in the street. Sometimes she’d look out into a crowd and scanning for a women who looked like her. “Could that be her?” she’d ask herself.
It wasn’t until her cousin Laura made the connection through 23andMe, that Stacy could finally answer those questions. A few weeks after connecting online the two sisters met for the first time, hugging in the front yard of Stacy’s home in South Carolina, holding on to each other for a very long time.
Inside the living room the two sisters thumbed through family photo albums. Greta marveling at pictures of people who were strangers to her but who were her relatives. She spent a long time staring at pictures of her mother, looking at her face and eyes.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-18560 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1704" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-768x511.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-880x586.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-1180x785.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />
“I’m connected to all these people I’ve never seen before. This was my family,” Greta said. “It’s quite disorienting.”
With her sister sitting next to her Stacy marveled at the miracle of the two finding each other.
“If it weren’t for 23andMe this never would have happened,” she said.
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

Sisters Connect with 23andMe

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-18189" title="DVelasco" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DVelasco.jpg" alt="" width="628" height="418" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DVelasco.jpg 628w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DVelasco-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 628px) 100vw, 628px" />
On her 105th birthday, Dominguita Velasco danced so long that her worried family asked her to sit down.
When she turned 111, she had a party with friends and family and blew out the blaze of candles on her cake.
Never far from her daughter, grandson and great grandchildren and always involved in her Oakland neighborhood, Dominguita says the secret to her long life has been to “stay happy.”
Her great granddaughter thinks it might be something else as well.
“I don’t know but I think it’s genetic,” said Erika LaTour. “Her mother lived to 102.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-18191 size-full" title="Tita_with_hat,velvetCap,FlapperDress,1929" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita_with_hatvelvetCapFlapperDress1929.jpg" alt="" width="213" height="350" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita_with_hatvelvetCapFlapperDress1929.jpg 213w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita_with_hatvelvetCapFlapperDress1929-183x300.jpg 183w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 213px) 100vw, 213px" />
A long-time customer of 23andMe, Erika recently signed up her great-grandmother for the service.
The two wanted to delve into the genetics of both Dominguita’s interesting ancestry – she’s from Mexico and has a mix of Native American, Southern European, Sephardic, and a little Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry  – and the traits that may have contributed to her long and healthy life.
“She’s really just had some issues with high blood pressure but doesn’t really take any medication,” Erika said.
Although Dominguita has had some issues with her heart, her hearing, and glaucoma, she’s never felt burdened by them. Or, as she says, “I don’t have any pain.”
On Mother’s Day – May 12th—Dominguita will turn 112, making her the 28th oldest “validated living supercentenarian” in the world, according to Gerontology Research Group. 23andMe would like to wish her a happy birthday, and you can sign a card for her here or simply post your wishes on Twitter or 23andMe&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/23andMe">Facebook</a> page.
<h2 dir="ltr">Supercentarian</h2>
A “supercentenarian” is anyone who lives to be more than 110. Of the more than a quarter of a million people genotyped by 23andMe, about 100 are over the century mark, but none are as supercentenarian as Dominguita.
While average life expectancy continues to rise, the reasons why some people live long and healthy lives—even working into their 90s and beyond—and others don’t are still not known. There are some intriguing possibilities.
One genetic link to longevity that appears to be pretty strong is the APOE gene, better known for its association with Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, while people with Alzheimer’s are more likely to have a version of the APOE gene known as e4, long-lived individuals are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23286790">less likely</a> to have the e4 version. Similarly, the e2 version of the APOE gene is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23040522">associated</a> with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s and higher odds of being long-lived.
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Institute for Aging Research are focused on Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry and a few genetic variants in two genes – CEPT and APOC3 – that protect against certain conditions. A different variant in APOC3 among Amish people is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19074352">associated</a> with lower levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol. Meanwhile, another study identified variants in the FOXO3a gene that may protect against certain cancers and heart disease in people of Japanese ancestry. National Geographic recently included a graphic illustrating the studies.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-18193 size-medium" title="Tita and Erika 2012 holding hands" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita-and-Erika-2012-holding-hands-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita-and-Erika-2012-holding-hands-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita-and-Erika-2012-holding-hands.jpg 628w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
<h2 dir="ltr">The Secret to a Long Life</h2>
However intriguing all of this is, no one has yet found the secret to a long life. Some of it is clearly genetic, but lifestyle and diet almost certainly play a significant role. On the Greek<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0"> Island of Ikaria</a>, a wonderful mix of diet, genes, and a relaxed and straightforward daily life seems to be particularly conducive to a long life.
And in Dominguita’s case, she may have benefited from all of those things. Her philosophy of staying happy, her genes, and her active life may all have helped her live a long life. A fixture in the local lore of Oakland, California, where she has lived since the early 1920s. Dominguita has by no means escaped hardship. She lost her husband and a daughter to tuberculosis and scraped and saved to raise her surviving daughter. She also had to work hard to keep her family restaurant afloat. But she did it all while remaining active in her community and surrounding herself with family.
Happy Birthday Dominguita, your life inspires us all.

A Birthday Wish For A Supercentenarian

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-18161 size-full" title="Grunge Map of Europe" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1736" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-1024x695.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-300x203.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-768x521.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-880x597.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-1180x800.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />The story of H is really the story of people in modern Europe.
H refers to a maternal lineage – also known as a maternal haplogroup – that originated long ago in the Near East but expanded into Europe with the recession of the last Ice Age. H –with its dozens of subgroups – is the most prevalent haplogroup in Europe today, but it wasn’t always that way.
Recently a team of scientists used DNA extracted from human skeletal remains dating from around 500 years ago to nearly 6,000 years ago to reconstruct what they say is the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe. Modern humans were in Europe as far back as 35,000 years ago, overlapping with Neanderthals who’d arrived first. But in looking at the DNA, specifically the DNA that defines maternal lineages, scientists found that H was very rare in those early hunter-gatherers.
So how did H become so common in Europe?
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What about you?
23andMe can tell you where you fall on that maternal family tree with details on more than<a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/deep/"> 750 different maternal haplogroups</a>.
Check out what branch of the human family tree your maternal line falls.
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The scientists, who wrote about their findings in a<a href="https://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/full/ncomms2656.html"> paper published in the journal Nature Communications</a>, theorize that the dramatic shift in haplogroups mirrors different waves of migrations into Europe and the stark change from a hunter-gatherer culture to one dominated by agriculture. The DNA evidence supports this theory, they say, and is bolstered by the archeological evidence. It wasn’t just a movement of ideas and technology that transformed prehistoric Europe, but the movement of people.
“This is the first high-resolution genetic record of these lineages through time, and it is fascinating that we can directly observe both human DNA evolving in ‘real-time’, and the dramatic population changes that have taken place in Europe,” said Dr Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide’s Australian Center for Ancient DNA, a co-author of the study.
The mitochondrial DNA used in this study tells not only stories of human prehistory, but also personal ancestry stories.  Everyone can trace his or her maternal ancestry using DNA testing. Your maternal lineage, defined by a type of DNA called mitochondrial DNA, is passed down to you only from your mother, who got it from her mother and so on all the way back in time to “mitochondrial Eve.”
This little piece of DNA is almost totally unchanged through the generations, linking us back through time to our ancient ancestors. The very slow rate at which it changes allows scientists to pinpoint in time major changes in human history such as our migration out of Africa and the patterns of people moving across the planet.
Each time there is a change in that DNA – a mutation – it creates a new “branch” of the maternal family tree – which traces back generations from one mother to the next. By using information from archeology, history and even what we know about changes in climate, we are gaining a better and better understanding of human history.

Mother Europe

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-18144" title="neanderthal" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/neanderthal.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="270" />
By Amick Boone
They once numbered 300 strong, but the Oregon Cavemen, members of a Grants Pass booster club formed in 1922 whose members claim to be “direct descendants of the Neanderthal,” are fading fast.
Club members worry that as their numbers dwindle, soon there won’t be anyone around to protect their totem — a 17-foot fiberglass caveman statue that has long been a sort of guardian of the town, known as the gateway to the Oregon Caves National Monument.
The Oregon Caveman story appeared recently in an <a href="https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324010704578419171802521946.html?mod=ITP_AHED">article in the Wall Street Journal</a>, which detailed how the group fought tooth-and-nail to keep their animal-skin-wearing, club-wielding caveman standing tall on one of the main streets of Grants Pass.
The group’s original bylaws made claims regarding their Neanderthal lineage, but back then there was no way to know for sure.   These days, we have access to genetic testing that could help the Cavemen find out how much Neanderthal DNA they have, but it might not necessarily mean what they think. And the club might be as exclusive as they once believed.
Most non-African people do have Neanderthal DNA, on average about 2.5 percent, but some outliers have even more. However — sorry, Oregon Cavemen — Neanderthal DNA may not predispose you to an animal-print fashion sense or a taste for primitive weaponry.   In fact, what it means to have a higher percentage of Neanderthal DNA — whether it gives you a thicker forehead or makes you hairier, for instance — isn’t known.
Homo neandertalensis — thick-boned humans who thrived for hundreds of thousands of years in Europe and parts of Asia — died out about 30,000 years ago, while we modern humans (Homo sapiens) survived. Apart from some theories of how Neanderthals contribute to modern humans, including that they gave us some sort of <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110809/full/476136a.html">“hybrid vigor”</a> — according to Peter Parham, a geneticist at Stanford University School of Medicine — why we flourished and Neanderthals died out is an evolutionary mystery <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/find-your-inner-neanderthal/">we’ve yet to unravel</a>.
While the fate of the caveman statue in Grants Pass has very little to do with Neanderthals, it does give us a chance to revisit the topic of our ancient human cousins. Far from being dumb and unable to communicate, scientists have learned that Neanderthals used relatively complicated tools, created adornments, and likely had a spoken language.
Clearly our understanding of Neanderthals has evolved from the cartoonish caveman depictions of the past as we learn more about not just our shared DNA but also as more Neanderthal artifacts are uncovered.
As University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks noted in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/decoding-neanderthals.html">a recent NOVA special on PBS</a>: “Neanderthals have the mother of all image problems.”
For more on Neanderthals check out these posts:
&#8211; <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/more-fun-with-neanderthals/">More Fun with Neanderthals</a> 
&#8211;<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/ancestry-2/find-your-inner-neanderthal/"> Find Your Inner Neanderthal</a> 
&#8211;<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/news/new-evidence-suggests-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals/"> New Evidence Suggests Humans and Neanderthal Interbreeding</a>
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Got Neanderthal DNA?
23andMe customers can <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/neanderthal/">find their inner Neanderthal</a> or at least how much Neanderthal DNA they have. Not yet a customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store">Visit our store</a>!
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Ancestry Service — Page 24