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Sparber had previously taught a class on DNA genealogy at a historical society. I spoke to her sister and she said they always suspected that there was something like that going on, but I was always a rumour until I turned up.”
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He took her to the hospital when she gave birth. Some of her friends locally knew, and the man that ended up being her first husband knew too. “It certainly seems that her family didn’t know she was having a baby. Honestly, finding that out was a bit of a relief, because sometimes adoption stories are very unhappy ones. “When she went back to college, she realised that she wasn’t ready to have a child and gave me up for adoption. He has not been able to find out definitively who his biological father was, but he has narrowed them down to two candidates. He believes that it was during a summer she spent back home in Alaska that he was conceived. From his research, he knows she was from Alaska and went to college in Minnesota, which is why he was adopted there. Sparber has pieced together what he can of his birth mother’s life. I was able to find out about her life and was even able to find out the name of her widower, which led to me getting in touch with him.” It was startling, because I went from knowing nothing at all to knowing everything in a matter of minutes. It was the first time I had ever laid eyes on somebody who was biologically related to me. “When I found out her name the first thing I did was Google her, and I saw this photo of her online. She died before he met her, however he was able to find out a lot about her. Her name was Patricia, and she was the granddaughter of Irish emigrants. Together with his newfound cousin Kate, Sparber was able to find out who his birth mother was. She sent me a message and said, ‘According to this, we’re first cousins, but I’ve never heard of you’.” But then around six months later, a first cousin popped up on the system. “First, the test confirmed that I had Irish ancestry, so that put my mind at ease slightly. Most of the time, these are distant cousins – anywhere as distant as fourth, fifth or sixth – but when Sparber did his test, he was connected to a first cousin. The tests - which are done by spitting in a tube and sending it off for analysis - tell people what percentage of different nationalities they are, and also connect you to other people you could be related to across the world. Then, a few months later, I decided to do a DNA test online through 23andMe.”Ģ is one of many providers of home DNA tests. After my mother pointed out that we couldn’t be certain, I contacted the adoption agency and got some information from them, but it was quite limited. “We have closed adoptions in America so what I knew about my biological family was extremely limited.
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His adoptive parents were told by the agency that he was of Irish and English descent, but he realised that he had no evidence to prove that. That uncertainty spawned a lot of questions for Sparber. For the first time I realised that I didn’t really know for certain what my background was.” At that point, a self-identity I had had for my entire life – this Irish-American identity – was thrown into question. “I was talking to my mother about my biological parents and she said, ‘Well we think they were Irish and English’. He never questioned either of those facts until a conversation with his adoptive mother about a decade ago raised some questions. He knew that he was adopted, and that he was Irish-American.
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Max Sparber grew up in Minnesota with two concrete pieces of information.