Finding Family

by Richard Hill

  If I were to take the test and match a Smith, for example, I would know that my birth father had been a Smith.

  I told Joe that I wanted to know more and he promised to e-mail a link to the company’s web site.

  As I was explaining my idea to Pat on the drive home, I realized how fitting it was that I had gotten this DNA tip from Joe. He and I had first learned about DNA from our tenth-grade biology teacher, Mrs. Stewart, who happened to be Joe’s mother!

  She had been the one who explained away the eye-color discrepancy between my adoptive parents and me.

  The next day, Joe e-mailed the link to me, as promised. The name of the DNA testing company was Family Tree DNA. I went to its web site and read about the new science that they called genetic genealogy.

  As I thought more about the Y-DNA test, I realized that my plan might not be foolproof. What if my birth father was also adopted? Or what if his father was adopted? For my DNA match to have my biological surname, all of the men in his paternal line and mine had to use the same surname back to the common ancestor.

  Family Tree DNA offered several options for its Y-DNA test. The least expensive one looked at twelve DNA markers. Tests for twenty-five, thirty-seven, and sixty-seven markers were available at higher prices.

  Not yet understanding what extra markers could do for me, and trying to be conservative in my spending, I ordered a twelve-marker test.

  DNA testing had advanced a lot since Conrad and I had met at the lab sixteen years earlier to have our blood drawn. The home test kit I received in the mail was simple and painless to use.

  Following instructions, I used the swabs they provided to lightly scrape some cells from inside my cheeks. I then completed the paperwork and placed everything in the pre-addressed return envelope.

  After dropping the envelope in the mail a couple days after Christmas, all I had to do was wait.

  In late January 2007, I received my results in the mail. A certificate listed my values, technically called “alleles,” for each of the twelve markers tested. For example, at marker DYS 393 my value was thirteen. At DYS 390, it was twenty-four, and so on.

  These marker values can mutate over time. But such mutations occur so slowly that my biological father, grandfather, and their recent paternal-line ancestors almost certainly had the same values as I did at all twelve markers.

  More exciting than the actual numbers was a password the company sent for my personal account at the Family Tree DNA web site. Using my kit number and password, I could now log in and see if I had any Y-DNA matches with other men in the database.

  Anxiously, I went to my computer and accessed my account. Looking at a menu of choices, I selected Y-DNA Matches. A list of forty-two names and e-mail addresses appeared on the screen. To my amazement, every one of these men had exactly the same twelve-marker results as I did.

  I scanned the surnames to see if any one name showed up multiple times. But each of my forty-two matches had a different surname. That was not what I expected at all!

  Wondering if I could cull the list by geography, I e-mailed a few of the matches to ask if their ancestors had ever lived in Michigan. All replied “no” and a few went on to share details of their ancestral trees.

  Fortunately, one respondent took the time to explain that our values for the first twelve markers were quite common among people of Western European heritage. That’s why I had so many matches.

  I would see a lot of irrelevant surnames because most twelve-marker matches resulted from common ancestors who lived many hundreds of years ago.

  Given that much time, the odds increased that one line or the other would include a name change, an informal adoption, or a child secretly fathered by someone other than his mother’s husband. As a result, the current surname in that line was out of sync with the true biological relationships tracked by the Y-DNA test.

  Furthermore, some of the common ancestors from a twelve-marker match would be so far back in time that people were not yet using surnames. A man known as “John the baker,” for example, had not yet adopted the name “John Baker.”

  To determine which matches had common ancestors from more recent times, I needed to test additional markers. He recommended an upgrade to thirty-seven markers.

  After reading his message, I logged into my account at Family Tree DNA and ordered the upgrade. Since they already had my DNA, I did not need to submit another sample.

  Around the first of March, I received an e-mail that my additional markers were ready for me to view online. Checking my account, I saw that only one of my forty-two matches at the twelve-marker level was still a match at a higher level. One man, who had tested twenty-five markers, matched me perfectly on all twenty-five.

  His name was W. Wiley Richards.

  Now I was excited. Could my birth father have been a Richards? I searched my memory but came up blank. Almost fourteen years had passed since I last looked at my search notes. I would have to dig them out to see if my birth mother, Jackie, had been around any men with that surname.

  The following Sunday, I went to the basement and found the large, plastic file box where all my search notes and documents had lain untouched since we moved to the lake house. I brought the box upstairs and stacked the contents on the table next to my favorite chair. The pile of notebooks, documents, photos, and loose notes was nearly eighteen inches thick.

  This could take awhile, I thought, settling in for the afternoon. But I was wrong. In less than a minute Pat heard me exclaim in a loud voice:

  “I found him.”

  “What do you mean?” Pat looked up from the book she was reading.

  “My birth father,” I responded. “I finally know who he was.”

  32

  HITTERS

  With everything stacked on the table, the most recent document, Jackie’s Social Security earnings record, waited for me on top of the pile. As soon as I picked it up and saw Dann’s Tavern, the name of the owner jumped out at me: Douglas S. Richards.

  Memories from my search came flooding back. Conrad Perzyk, who Jackie misnamed as my father, had been a bartender at Dann’s when Jackie worked there as a waitress. He once told me the bar owner had gone out with Jackie.

  That man was Doug Richards. And now my Y-chromosome was a perfect match to a man whose surname was Richards.

  Coincidence? I didn’t think so. My gut said Doug Richards was my biological father.

  For the rest of the day, I dug through the pile—re-reading my notes from when I met Conrad and found Jackie’s girlfriend, Cordie. I pulled together everything I had on Doug Richards.

  He was at least ten years older than Jackie…and married. While an affair with a married man was not my dream story, I was excited to have a solid lead consistent with my DNA test results.

  According to Cordie, Doug did not look like me. That, too, was disappointing. Since eliminating short, light-haired Conrad from consideration, I had again envisioned my birth father as a tall man with dark hair.

  Cordie had told me that Doug moved to Texas and bought another bar. She also mentioned that he had died. If he was my father, I would once again be too late to meet my biological parent.

  When the search for my birth father had gone cold fourteen years earlier, it was because I’d had too many suspects. Nothing made one stand out from the rest. Now my Y-DNA test had painted a bulls-eye on the name Doug Richards. I had a single candidate on whom to focus my sights.

  Having gone down the wrong path with Conrad and others, I wasn’t about to anoint Doug Richards just yet. The logic seemed right, but this could prove to be one of those situations where two and two did not make four.

  Somehow, I had to prove or disprove that Doug Richards was the right man. I had no idea how to do that. But I felt confident I would figure it out.

  The first step, I reasoned, was to contact my Y-DNA match through e-mail. Maybe he was in Michigan or Texas and could identify the branch of his family that included Doug.

  I sent an e-mail t
o W. Wiley Richards, referring to our twenty-five-marker Y-DNA match at Family Tree DNA. I told him I lived in Michigan and asked him where he lived and where his ancestors had lived.

  Wiley wrote back that he lived in Florida and his family had been in the state since his great-grandfather was born there in 1827. The most distant paternal ancestor he could trace with certainty was his great-great-grandfather, who was born in Franklin County, North Carolina in 1796. As far as Wiley knew, no one in his family had ever lived outside the Southeastern states.

  Once again, my hope for a quick, easy solution did not pan out. Wiley’s known family tree did not lead directly to Doug. Our common ancestor must have lived farther back in time than Wiley could trace.

  My next thought was to re-contact Jackie’s girlfriend, Cordie. If she knew more details about Doug Richards and his family, maybe I could trace his descendants.

  I looked up Cordie’s phone number in my notes, substituted the new suburban Detroit area code, and dialed. Would she still be alive? Would she remember me? When Cordie answered, I discovered the answer to both questions was yes.

  Briefly, I filled her in on the Y-DNA test and my match to a man named Richards in Florida. I then reminded her that the only Richards on my long list of suspects had been Doug Richards, the owner of Dann’s Tavern.

  Cordie had not wanted to believe that Jackie was involved with a married man. But she had no trouble believing that Doug would have been interested in a young woman as beautiful as Jackie was.

  “When did Doug move to Texas?” I asked.

  “It was still in the forties,” answered Cordie. “I remember hearing that he had a really big bar out there.”

  Cordie could not remember why Doug chose Texas or to what part of the state he had moved. But she did remember hearing about his death many years later.

  “When did he die?” I asked.

  Cordie had to reflect on that awhile, trying to remember what was happening in her own life when she heard the news.

  “It would have been in the eighties,” she concluded.

  When I asked her about Doug’s family, Cordie could not remember much. She had met his wife at the bar, but could not recall if they had children or not.

  “He did have a brother, Jack,” she remembered. “Jack owned another tavern on Joy Road called the Joy Bar.”

  “Everybody knew Doug and Jack,” she continued. “I think one of them built a third bar called the Oasis that later became the Good Time Bar.”

  Cordie knew nothing about Jack’s family and did not know where either of the brothers had lived.

  “One of the brothers was into horse racing,” she added. “I can’t remember which one, but he owned quite a few race horses.”

  Thinking I might check the race tracks, I asked if the horses were thoroughbreds or trotters. Cordie couldn’t remember.

  Once I had tapped all her memories of Doug and his family, I thanked her again and ended the call.

  I was feeling pretty confident that I could trace the family. Doug and his brother, Jack, were both prominent businessmen in the Livonia area. I had the names of three bars they were involved in: Dann’s Tavern, the Joy Bar, and the Oasis. Plus, one of them owned race horses. There had to be a paper trail somewhere.

  The problem, I realized, was that six decades had passed since my birth. Could I pick up a trail that cold? And would it lead me to family members living today?

  Since I worked for myself now, it was a lot easier to take time off during the week when libraries and historical museums were sure to be open. On a Friday morning in March, I drove to Livonia.

  Expecting this to be a challenging search of historical records, I stopped in Lansing to pick up an expert assistant: my cousin, Kathy. Four years younger than I was, Kathy had become the first genealogist in my adoptive mother’s family. With two of us looking through the records, I figured we could cover more ground.

  Kathy and I drove by the site of Dann’s Tavern at the southwest corner of Plymouth and Stark. There wasn’t even a building there. It was just a used car lot.

  Our stops at Civic Center Library and Greenmead Historical Museum were not especially productive. Since Livonia did not even become a city until 1950, there were no old city directories like the ones that had proved so useful in Lansing and Plymouth.

  We did find some old phone books. In the 1945 directory, I found a small Yellow Pages ad for Dann’s Tavern that included the name “Doug Richards.” I photocopied the page.

  Cordie had told me that one of the Richards brothers built a bar called the Oasis that later became the Good Time Bar. That bar was no longer in business, but I learned there was still a bar in the same building. The new name was Hitters.

  That sounded like a sports bar to me. We had to eat lunch somewhere. Why not eat at Hitters? It would be cool to eat in a building with historical connections to my birth father’s family.

  My son, Mark, lived in the Detroit area and coincidentally was working in Livonia that week. So I invited him to meet Kathy and me for lunch at Hitters. I gave him the address.

  Hitters was also on Plymouth Road, just a couple of blocks west of the Dann’s Tavern site. A huge Ford factory loomed across the street. The bar was smaller than I expected with the entrance in the rear.

  The place was dimly lit, a bit smoky, and smelled of stale beer. Kathy and I chose a clean table near the door so we could watch for Mark. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see that the clientele was totally blue collar and 100 percent male. Kathy was the only female customer in the place.

  Although there was a TV near the bar, this was definitely not what I knew as a sports bar.

  Our table was one of those high ones with the long-legged chairs. Like magic, a waitress appeared out of the haze. She had long blonde hair and a body that screamed surgical enhancement. Dressed in skintight short shorts and a bikini top, she leaned in to take our order.

  Just then, as Kathy and I were struggling to project an air of normalcy, Mark walked in.

  Taking in the atmosphere of the place, he saw me, my conservatively dressed cousin, and our scantily clad waitress engaged in conversation. Sensing the incongruity of the whole scene, Mark broke into a huge grin.

  He then joined us and we ordered some burgers that turned out to be pretty good. After lunch, Kathy and I said good-bye to Mark in the parking lot and proceeded to our next stop.

  The morning’s research had identified the racetracks around Livonia. The Detroit Race Course had been a big deal for awhile; but racing there had ended in 1998. Now the only track still active was Northville Downs. We stopped by and could see they did harness racing. On a weekday afternoon in March, not much was going on.

  I found a small building that served as the track’s office and went inside. A young girl in her twenties was the only one there. I asked if she knew anyone who had been around the track for fifty years or more. She said she could think of a couple men, but they were not there that day.

  I wrote out the names “Doug Richards” and “Jack Richards” on a piece of paper. Then I added my name and phone number below. I asked her to see if anyone remembered a horse owner by either of those names. If anyone did, would she ask him to call me?

  The girl said she would do it. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Whatever the case, no one ever called.

  Of all my research trips to the Detroit area, this was one of the least productive. Yet it was clearly the most memorable. Whenever I see Kathy at a family gathering, she always mentions our infamous lunch at Hitters.

  33

  ONLINE ASSISTANCE

  In March 2007, I had a resource that was unavailable in the early years of my search: the Internet. Someone at the Livonia library suggested I try FamilySearch.org, a web site maintained by the Mormon Church.

  Returning home from Livonia, I got on my computer, went to the site and filled out a search form. I entered Doug Richards and specified a death year of 1985 plus or minus five years in the state of Texas. This brought
up the Social Security Death Index where only one record matched my query.

  That record was for a Douglas Richards born in 1913 with a Social Security number issued in Michigan. He died in April 1986 and his last residence was Hillsboro, Texas.

  This seemed like a perfect fit. He was thirteen years older than Jackie, had lived in Michigan, and died in Texas in the eighties as Cordie had remembered.

  I then searched for “Hillsboro newspaper” and found the site of the Hillsboro Reporter. I called and asked how to find old obituaries. They told me that back issues were on microfilm and kept at the city library.

  Calling the library, I learned that the staff would not search microfilm for me, but some volunteer genealogists probably would. I submitted a search request with Doug’s name and the month and year of his death.

  A couple days later, I received an e-mail with an obituary attached. The top line read Douglas S. Richards, Sr.

  Noticing that the middle initial “S” was consistent with Doug’s name on Jackie’s Social Security record, I read every word with interest.

  This Doug Richards was born in Texas and had lived in Michigan for ten years. Survivors included his widow, a son and daughter, and two brothers: Vernie in Michigan and Joe in Texas.

  Some of the details, however, did not fit my expectations. He was listed as a retired rancher, not a bar owner, and he had stayed married to the same woman for fifty years. Would the Doug Richards that Cordie remembered have been able to do that?

  Furthermore, there was no mention of a brother named John, which I assumed was Jack’s real name.

  Someone told me that the Social Security Death Index was only partially complete. It depended on survivors reporting the information to Social Security. Perhaps I had found the wrong Doug Richards.

  Just in case it was the right family, I searched the online telephone directory for a Vernie Richards in Michigan, but did not find anyone. That did not surprise me. It was now ninety-four years after Doug’s birth. His brothers might not be alive, either.