>
Article snippet: Bob Hutchinson’s mother told him and his siblings almost nothing about her family, no matter how often they asked. “She was good at brushing people off,” said Mr. Hutchinson, 60. Growing up, there were no photos of his mother as a child in the home, or of her own parents. She said that she was an only child, that her parents were dead. Her heritage, she claimed, was Italian and Swedish. Mr. Hutchinson suspected there was more to the story. Then his sister-in-law, digging into the family past, found his mother’s childhood home listed in a 1930 census. The family had lived in Montclair, N.J., and was described as “Negro.” Mr. Hutchinson, who runs an advertising agency and lives in Pacifica, Calif., had never been told he had African-American heritage. These days, family secrets like this one are becoming harder to keep. A growing number of companies now offer DNA tests that promise to pinpoint a customer’s heritage and, with permission, to identify genetic relatives. The firms include generalists like 23andMe and Ancestry.com and specialty companies like African Ancestry. Millions of people have signed up for the tests, sending saliva samples to laboratories and paying $100 to $350 or more for an analysis. The customers are eager to know where they came from, to find a familial context that may be lacking. The answers hidden in DNA can be revelatory, shedding light on hidden events occurring decades earlier and forever changing the family narrative. But a new analy... Link to the full article to read more