ChatterLei

My aunt recently shared a photograph with me, one that immediately pulled me in.

Sitting at the top of a set of steps in front of their home are my great-grandfather Carnahan and great-grandmother Elsa. On the grassy yard below them sits their young son, Richard, about five years old, along with a woman I do not recognize. It looks like a warm summer day, the kind where everything feels still and content.

But what caught my attention most was the man sitting between my great-grandparents, holding a baby on his lap.

DNA, after all, is a bit of a tattler.

The man is a family friend, Francis G. The baby he’s holding is my maternal grandfather… also named Francis, after him.

At the time, the photo would have been taken around 1914. I don’t know who stood behind the camera that day, but they captured something more than a simple family moment, though no one could have known it then.

My great-grandfather Carnahan’s story begins with mystery. As a baby, he was left on the doorstep of a couple who could not raise him. They reached out to a nearby childless couple, who adopted him and raised him as their own. He became part of the Fox family, an only child, well-loved, and respected in his community.

In 1908, at the age of 35, Carnahan married Elsa, who was just 23. She was one of thirteen children, a teacher, and someone who could sing and play the piano. Together, they began building a life.

Their first son, Richard, was born that December. Five years later, in 1913, my grandfather was born.

But tragedy came not long after. In 1915, Elsa died while giving birth to another child, who also did not survive.

Carnahan, nearly blind at the time, was unable to care for the boys. They were taken in and raised by Elsa’s parents.

For years, our family has tried to uncover the identity of Carnahan’s biological parents. We had followed several leads about his mother, but nothing ever surfaced about his father.

Recently, several of us—my aunts, my mom, cousins, my niece, and I—took Ancestry DNA tests, hoping for answers. With those results, my mom, one of her sisters, and I visited a family search center to see if we could finally connect the missing pieces.

As a helpful gentleman worked through the DNA matches, he paused and said something none of us expected.

He told us we might be searching for the wrong person.

Instead of looking for Carnahan’s biological mother…

we should be looking for my grandfather’s biological father.

What?

That wasn’t even a question we knew to ask.

It turns out, the man in the photograph, the family friend, Francis, holding my grandfather as a baby, was not just a friend.

He was my grandfather’s biological father.

We left the family search center that day with more questions than answers.

But as we continued researching, more pieces fell into place. We’ve since confirmed that my grandfather and his brother did not share the same father. His brother bears a strong resemblance to Carnahan, but my grandfather always looked just a little different.

Now we understand why.

The truth, it seems, has a way of waiting…

but it doesn’t stay hidden forever.