Australian Adoptee Finds Siblings in Denmark with MyHeritage DNA
David Oliver of Australia was born and adopted in England in 1960. Through a DNA match on MyHeritage, he discovered that his birth father was Danish, and was able to connect with and meet his 3 half-siblings!
David was raised in Warwickshire, England. “I was offered a loving, stable and reliable upbringing,” he says. “I had a good education and wanted for nothing. I was told of my adoption from an early age, but this was not discussed often over the years. Both of my adopted parents have now passed away.”
David Oliver
David’s adoptive parents told him that his birth mother was Danish, but he had always assumed that his father was British. He was able to find his birth mother relatively easily by obtaining the official Church of England adoption documents, which became accessible as the result of a change in the law in 1971. “I understand how my natural mother might feel about this,” says David. “When she signed the papers to adopt me, she would have been in no doubt at that time, 1960, that there would never be any way I or anyone else could trace her in the future. She has declined to meet to date, which I completely respect.”
‘It was an instant feeling’
When David obtained his birth certificate, he realized that his birth father had also been Danish. “I first took a DNA test with another service but I got no interesting results. Then I uploaded my DNA data to MyHeritage and literally as soon as I did, I began receiving matches,” says David. “All of a sudden I got a match with a cousin living in Denmark. And it was so accurate, it nailed down the exact place where I found out later I was conceived — the town of Fredericia. This is how successful MyHeritage was.”
David reached out to his second cousin, Peter. “It was an instant feeling, you know that you are related,” says David. “My DNA research on the MyHeritage platform resulted in me linking up with Peter Hammer in Denmark, who put me in touch with his mother, Jette Hammer, his aunt Janne, and his uncle Jesper, who lives in South Africa, all of whom are my first cousins. This was rapidly followed by my own sister and brothers, Anne-Mette, Axel, and Svenn.”
Anne-Mette says that she received an email from her brother, Axel, late at night, asking if she was awake. “It was very unusual,” she says. “He asked if he could call me.” Anne-Mette says that some of her relatives took DNA tests through MyHeritage to check the possible Spanish roots of her late grandmother. But then Peter was contacted by David.
Peter and Jette guessed immediately that David’s birth father was Anne-Mette’s father, Palle. “I had a half-sister in the United States who my father didn’t know about before 1996, so we were a bit familiar with this kind of situation,” says Anne-Mette. “Jette understood that David was a half-brother to us, and asked David to send photos of himself. I got a picture that same night. I was laughing; he looks like my brothers.”
“My father was a very good looking man,” says Anne-Mette. “As a very young man, he was part of the Resistance fighting the Germans. He had a flying license. Women were just in love with him.” She believes he didn’t know about David’s existence.
David also got in touch with his late brother Ole’s wife and children, and the daughter of another sister, Linda, who sadly died in 2012.
‘I’ve never felt so welcome in my life’
Because of the pandemic, David was unable to travel to meet his newfound family, but they stayed in touch via video chat. Finally, last August, David traveled to Denmark with his wife Nicola to meet everyone. “We had a wonderful month there,” says David. “It was fantastic. I just felt I have known them for all of my life. I’ve never felt so welcome in my life. A family I didn’t know existed and that I feel I’m part of and I think they feel the same.”
David and Nicola first visited his newly found cousins from his mother’s side of the family with their parents. “We were met with true warmth and hospitality and enjoyed a wonderful family barbeque together,” says David.
Then, they stayed with Anne-Mette for a month near the city of Fredericia, Jutland, where she lives. While staying there, his brothers Axel and Svenn also met up with them on several occasions.
Left to right: Nicola, David, and Anne-Mette
“We had a wonderful time,” says Anne-Mette.
“I was deeply moved by the warmth and affection Nicola and I were shown during our trip to Denmark,” says David. “The weirdest feeling on my part is that it felt as though my family and I had known each other for many years.”
David (center) with his sister-in-law Merete (left) and his sister Anne-Mette (right)
“I am now in the privileged position of having not just one family in the U.K., but another large family mainly in Denmark, but scattered far and wide around the world,” David says. “It’s been a wonderful discovery.”
If you’ve made a wonderful discovery with MyHeritage yourself, we’d love to hear about it! Please send it to us via this form or via email at stories@myheritage.com.
