Ancestry testing to find my father

Finally at last, no more ??? above my head

Posted on May 29, 2014

Note: Please be sure to read page 2 which explains how I used the ancestry testing and shows screen shots…This is my first and only blog. I hope this could be an inspiration to others and that I could someday help others as well. My e-mail address is domidna@outlook.com in case you have any questions/suggestions/comments

I’d first like to introduce myself. My name is Dominique Vaughn and I was born in Portland, Oregon in 1985. In the beginning, my mother assumed I was the child of whom she was last with before she found out that she was pregnant with me. So when the test for paternity came back as negative when I was a baby, she did not believe it. We all know that labs can screw things up sometimes and they have but naw this was a truth that she just couldn’t believe. He had a daughter that was less than a year older than me (whom I resembled a lot as a child, so much that my grandma thought I was with him one day on the bus) and a son that was less than a year younger than me so I was like the middle child. They continued on as if he was my father even though I don’t remember seeing him too much. I remember seeing his mother a lot more and spending time with this sister and brother I thought I had. We used to have lots of fun so I do have childhood memories with them. It was cool. Then one day, we were taking yet another paternity test with him when I was about 10 years old. After that negative test, communication pretty much stopped though I did see those 2 siblings (I once thought were mine) a few times as a teenager. Then in the end I ended up asking him for a test as an adult just so I could evaluate his paternity markers as well, just so I could be certain.

So at this point my mom just did not know what to do, I already had a good stepdad in my life Daddy Brown (my sisters father) and he made sure that we had the things that we needed. He also told me that I could call him dad but for some reason I could just never say it, I don’t know what was stopping me, a part of me just wanted to at least know my real dad and that he maybe abandoned me and then yeah that would make it easier but this guy that was my dad had no idea I existed to begin with. Daddy Brown was the kind of guy that takes care of his children and doesn’t treat a stepchild differently. He’s one of the good guys for that.

I reached the age of 15 and started getting into that dating age — “hmmm I’d better start searching for my father” I thought because I don’t want to meet somebody and find out that he’s my cousin or even worse my brother! So I asked my mom, hey well since the test was negative on Daddy Cole twice, we really have to start looking at our other options. Who else do you know of that could have been around the time I was conceived? She had to think hard about that, 15 years is a long time. Then one day in 2003 which was a few months before my graduation, she came home and told me that she saw a guy from a 1 time encounter and she gave him her number, told him that he might have a kid.
Daddy Rogers helped me pay for half of the test. He wore glasses like me and had a lighter skin tone than me, which we were looking for because I am lighter than my mother. I didn’t meet any of his family. He had no children either yet. The test came back negative – I saw the results online and it made me feel sad immediately. My mom called to tell him the news and I could hear her on the phone. He wanted to speak with me but she told him that I couldn’t because she knew I was crying about it and couldn’t bear to talk to someone, it would make it worse. So then I knew that I was not going to meet my father before my high school graduation in June of 2003 from Jefferson High School, but I did have all the love and support of my mothers family. 😊

My mom told me that she was only active for about a year and a half before she got pregnant with me then I said well let’s do this, just write a list of any and everybody from before you knew I was in your belly. So she did that for me. The list wasn’t as bad as I expected (which was written on the back of a small envelope) so I was like “okay, we can work with this”. All we have to do is find the 2-3 people you listed before this guy you thought was my father because what we do know now is that you were already pregnant with me when you two hooked up then. I even got online to find out when I was conceived and it turns out that to be born on Aug, 24th 1985 I was conceived around Thanksgiving or the first week of December 1984.

In 2008 I searched hard for a guy that I only had a first name to which was a very popular name so I was like great, don’t know how I am going to accomplish this, she thought that his last name was Williams or something like it, maybe Wilson something of that sort. Well so I sought out to find him and wow one day I got a response from a woman on blackplanet.com yeah I know I used any and everything lol and she said that sounded like it described her cousin. She sent me a couple of pictures. My mom said yeah it kind of looks like him but because he was making a funny face she could not tell. On the 2nd picture he was mean mugging kind of so my mother was like ‘hmm, with those 2 together okay that’s him” Turns out it was him and his last name did not start with a W. This was Daddy Harris. He came over to my mothers house, put his hands on his head in disbelief. He thought I looked like his sister that’s what had him. We had a good face to face conversation. He had me meet his 6 children (all younger than me, the oldest was in high school) and his mother and even had us come to a family get together at his aunties just because it was close to where we were living. When taking photos, my smile was just the same as his.

The paternity testing prices have went from being about $250 to about $78 by the time I was through with this stuff. I always compared what one test was telling me my numbers were to what the other said just to make sure that at least the numbers for me were not mixed up at all and turns out the cheaper tests still get the job done. Anyway so when the results came in from my test with Daddy Harris I asked my sister to tell me what the results said because I was not going to be by a computer for a while(this was before me having the phones with internet came about). Then she said “oh no Domi, it says he is excluded as your father.” I was waiting to see if she was going to say “JOKE” but no she was serious I was like “for real, are you serious” she was like “yeah”. Why did I have to ask while I was driving? I almost got into a few accidents that day (got blown by a few people) my mind was so not in the right place. Just a woman wanting to know some information that I could not figure out and it bothered me to the core.

This time I was a little bit more faster moving on the next one but it wasn’t  until 2009 and 2010 that I actually had contact with him via facebook. Daddy Tucker and I played phone tag and only got to speak once I believe and then he wished me a happy birthday when that came around and then I didn’t hear from him since. I decided to just focus on my kids though I was angered by his lack of getting back to me in a timely manner.  Even members of his family were stuck trying to wait to find out if we were related or not. So anyway I let 3 more years go by, moved from Portland to Sacramento and everything. More time wasted not knowing the other half of where I came from. In Feb 2014 that’s when I decided that enough was enough. Sometimes you have to make people not ignore you so that’s exactly what I did from here in Sacramento so within a week he called me and he sat with my mom a couple days later to take the test. Dang even that came back negative. I was sort of used to it at this point though I wanted it to be finally over but it wasn’t. I had gotten used to trying to keep a lid on my emotions and not opening my heart up to possible families of mine until I knew for sure.

Online I saw some stories about adoptees finding their biological families via ancestry testing, hmm I thought. If they can do that then I certainly can find my fathers family right? So I did my research and boy did I do lots of it and I quickly realized that if this was out 10 years ago and for the lower price of $99 rather than $299 or more that it used to be, I would have jumped on that. So I took a test at 23andme.com, but I couldn’t sop there, these kinds of tests take about 6 weeks to process so I ordered a test for ftdna.com and ancestry.com and I already learned about the free website where people upload their raw DNA data from any of those 3 sites to find some matches as well. Which works well for someone not on the kind of mission that I was on.

It took about 90 days from the time I got my first set of results from 23andme until the time I pinned down my father and had a test confirmation to prove it. This is where I really feel bad for me, after all my hard work and my desire to have a hug from my father and to be able to call someone “dad” and to have him walk me down the aisle for my wedding, I got lead to a person that my mother had been with before but he had passed away in 2008. Hardest pill to swallow EVER! My father never knew of my existence, so I feel bad for us both, we missed each other. I was too late, but I know I shouldn’t blame myself but it’s hard not to. I had the resources that my mother did not to get to the information she gave me. Any name she could give I could find, boy was I good at tracking people down. Also the irony of this is that the guy we found was on her list she made for me many years ago but because he was somewhere near the top maybe just 3 people down, I was like no we aren’t going into the summer before I was conceived that’d be just bothering some other men unnecessarily. It surely was a test of her memory, it was there but the timing was just out of whack on her list I guess. I was proud that she knew the first and for the most part last names of everyone. She never said “oh yeah there was this one guy but I can’t think of his name”. Though I started to think that maybe there was just 1 and that’s why we were getting no where. I kept asking “are you sure?”

It doesn’t matter how old you are, you should know where you come from. There are even health reasons to know, such as the fact that for my father, it was his kidneys. I now know to get my kidneys tested and certain other conditions I should look out for, you want to be able to tell your doctor the real history of your family not some fictitious information that will not give them any clues to how they can help you prevent what can be coming to you. 


My father passed on June 4th, 2008 but his birthday tripped me out being the same day as my grandma and her twin sister all along so sometimes it lands on thanksgiving 11/26. My sisters birthday is on the 24th of a month just like mines on the 24th of another. She works within 2 blocks of my other sister and who knew that 2 people that share about 25% DNA with me were in the same vicinity most of the time. So anyway about my dad – RIP Ronnie L. Lowery at the age of 41, I’m looking forward to learning all that I can about you through people that will tell the stories and keep your memory alive. I now have another sister, grandma, an aunt, and and an uncle. A total of 5 nieces/nephews and many many many cousins since I am related to the Warren family out of Texas. Now that I have started all of this I have to explore my granddads side as well which all I know is the surname Chambers, Willinghams in Portland, Oregon and Pendleton, OR so I will get started on that when I can.

There are specific people that I have to give thanks to ********

Mom (at any time you could have become like some women out there that don’t care to help their kids find out who their dad is. Even with disappointment after disappointment that put you in a bad mood for a little, you still stayed open with me and did anything that 
I asked of you, thank you for allowing me to pick your brain on such a subject and still keep a smile on your face, I am so glad to have you as a mother)

D. Johnson (distant match on 23andme.com gave me my first leads regarding the Nickelberry and Allen families from Texas to Portland, Oregon)
C. Pruitt ( close match on ancestry.com this helped me pinpoint which one of Joseph’s children I was a descendant of which was Quitman Warren since our match was so close it couldn’t be much farther)

E. Pruitt (Richardson) (helped me play the guessing game on which of their first cousins could be my grandma/grandpa based off of the info I had gathered so far, she ultimately got me in touch with my grandma to make that first connection)

D. Rothwell (thanks for selling me the family book, I will always keep that book, now I know my place in it even though I did not know my place when I first received it)

J. Richardson (brainstormed on any of his cousins that may have been around Jeff, Grant or Roosevelt in 1984, he himself fit the age range so he and my dad would have been super close in age, he made the sweetest gesture when he found out that my dreams of having my dad walk me down the aisle were shattered and that was to do it himself in honor of my father, he is truly one of the great guys and I am glad to have him as a cousin, he just could only do it if it was going to be in Portland unfortunately and that won’t be the case)

S. Lowery (without you sister, I would not have this wonder out of my head yet with total confirmation, you helped prove that we were in fact just as related as the sister I grew up with so now I have 2 half sisters!)

C. Vaughn and N. Vaughn (sis and grandma - you guys played lab rats for me, didn’t know what I was doing but chose to trust in my knowledge and allow me to use your DNA as examples so that I knew what to look for, thank you for your help in my research, love you 2 so much!)