Finding Family

Special volunteers known as search angels are helping people like Annette Adams unravel the mysteries of their long-lost relatives.

- Melody Warnick

The upending of 57-year-old Annette Adams’s life began with an email she received during the summer two years ago. You look like my mom, the stranger wrote. I believe you might be her sister. Who is this crazy person? Annette thought.

A month earlier, Annette, who had been adopted as a child, had mailed a test tube of her saliva to the DNA testing company 23andMe because she wanted to know her genetic risk for diseases like Parkinson’s and breast cancer. Finding her biological family wasn’t even on her radar. She already had a family— loving parents, now in their 80s, who had taught her to say “I’m special because I was chosen” to any schoolkid in Millers Creek, NC, who dared tease her because she was adopted.

Reading the message from a woman who might be her niece, Annette wondered briefly if she wanted to go down this road. What if it hurt her adoptive parents? What if it hurt her? But her curiosity outweighed the doubts. After a few days, she messaged back: Tell me more. Who am I?

Such fundamental questions fuel genealogical searches, says Jackie Hogan, Ph.D., a professor of sociology and anthropology at Bradley University and the author of Roots Quest: Inside America’s Genealogy Boom, and technology has made the research so much easier. Billions of historical records, including marriage certificates, military draft cards, and ships’ passenger lists, have shifted from dusty library and courthouse filing cabinets to the endless pages of the Internet.