![\"Richard](\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Richard-Hill.jpg\" "\\"Richard")
<\/a><\/p>\nRichard Hill<\/em><\/p>\n SOURCE:\u00a0 Richard Hill (Houston, Harris County, Texas); photographed by Stephen J. Danko on 06 November 2011.<\/p>\n Minnesota sealed adoption records in 1917 .\u00a0 Since then, 46 more states did the same .\u00a0 Alaska, Kansas, and South Dakota didn’t .\u00a0 Illinois is opening the records on 15 November 2011 .\u00a0 The intention of sealing the records was to protect the child from the stigma of illegitimacy.<\/p>\n In 1970, 175,000 children were adopted .\u00a0 About 58% of people know an adopter or an adoptee .\u00a0 There are 400,000 registrations for adoption searches using such utilities as Adoption.com and the International Soundex Registry .\u00a0 Televisions shows such as\u00c2\u00a0The Locator, Find My Family, and Searching for… investigate adoption cases.<\/p>\n There are two categories of adoptees:\u00a0 those tormented by unanswered questions and those who are content and not particularly curious.<\/p>\n When Dick Hill was getting ready to go to college, he had heartburn and went to the doctor .\u00a0 The doctor consulted his files and asked Dick “How do you feel about being adopted?”\u00c2\u00a0 This was the first time Dick had ever heard that he had been adopted .\u00a0 He didn’t tell his parents that he knew about the adoption.<\/p>\n In 1978, on his deathbed, Dick’s father told him about the adoption .\u00a0 Dick’s mother was known .\u00a0 She had lived with the couple and gave birth .\u00a0 Dick also had a brother .\u00a0 Their mother gave birth to two sons by different fathers, and then died at age 21.<\/p>\n Through a confidential intermediary program, Dick’s father was located, but DNA proved that the man was not Dick’s father.<\/p>\n Dick heard about the Y-DNA test and discovered that his DNA matched that for people with the surname Richards .\u00a0 Dick discovered that his mother had worked for a man named Doug Richards .\u00a0 However Doug Richards had four brothers who were living in Michigan at the time Dick was conceived and any one of them could have been Dick’s father.<\/p>\n Each of the five brothers had a living son who agreed to take\u00c2\u00a0a sibling test based on short tandem repeats (STRs) .\u00a0 Based on this test, Dick learned that there was an 87.4% chance that Doug Richards, Jr. was his half-brother. The descendants of the other brothers showed a much lower\u00c2\u00a0probability of being Dick’s half-brother .\u00a0 Dick had\u00c2\u00a0discovered who\u00c2\u00a0his birth parents were and had reconnected with his biological brother .\u00a0 Dick then showed a photo of his “real” parents, the couple who raised him.<\/p>\n Dick maintains a website with a wealth of information about DNA testing at http:\/\/www.dna-testing-advisor.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Stephen J. Danko<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the Seventh International Family Tree DNA Conference for Group Administrators,\u00a0Richard Hill, MBA\u00c2\u00a0presented a talk on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153An Adoptee’s Journey to His Ancestral Surname.\u201d Richard Hill SOURCE:\u00a0 Richard Hill (Houston, Harris County, Texas); photographed by Stephen J. Danko on 06 November … Continue reading