Going Dutch

Back in January of 2020 I received a message through Ancestry.com from a DNA match in the Netherlands.

My contact is the adoptive mother of a Chinese girl, born in 1996. Her daughter was adopted as an infant and has no knowledge of her birth family, other than they are in China. They don’t even know which part of that vast country hold her roots.

It seems that I turned up on her list of DNA matches, with the smallest increment, and a designation of 5th to 8th cousin. A measurement this size would by most caucasian testers, be disregarded as “noise” except for the fact that I know I have a healthy-sized batch of  Asian genes. 

While there’s probably no way we’ll ever find our common ancestor, I’ve at least been helpful to them as far as narrowing their search. My known connections to Foochow led them to do more concentrated searching and in the process they uncovered additional matches in Fujian Province.

Just today, I had a message from her and I understand they have matches from Shandong Province as well. Her daughter’s genetic makeup is predominantly Han with about 51% northern and 30% southern. I also have some Hunter connections in Shandong Province, that I haven’t quite nailed down but they’re much too close to be just coincidence.