This heartwarming tale comes to us straight from the USA: Genevieve Purinton of Tampa, Florida just met the daughter she had believed was dead, a whole 69 years after her birth.
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A touching story
On May 12, 1949, Genevieve gave birth to a daughter at Saint Mary Hospital in Gary, Indiana. The baby was the fruit of a secret relationship between the 18-year-old young woman and an already-married man. Genevieve, still in high school, gave birth to what she had believed was a dead infant, since the doctors had announced that the child was stillborn. ‘I said I wanted to see the baby. They told me she died,” Genevieve told Fox Tampa news channel.
Devastated, she immediately demanded a death certificate—but unknowingly signed adoption papers instead. Genevieve, now 88 years old, was destroyed by this story. She never stopped thinking of the daughter that was torn from her, and never had another child.
A moving reunion
69 years later, Genevieve had the incredible surprise of finally holding the vanished daughter in her arms—a miracle that she owes to DNA testing. Her daughter, Connie Moultroup, always knew she was adopted, and even knew her birth mother’s maiden name. She tried all her life to find Genevieve since her adoptive mother died when she was 5 and her father married a woman who mistreated her. She thus swore to herself to someday find her biological mother.
On Christmas 2017, Connie’s daughter gave her a kit from DNA Ancestry that allowed her to compare her DNA with 10 million other American samples. The results of this simple test completely altered her life, helping her discover a distant cousin. Connie contacted this cousin, who was able to give her the name of her still-living mother. ‘I said, “Here’s my mother’s given name.” She said, “That’s my aunt and she’s still alive,”’ Connie shared, tears in her eyes. She sent a letter to her mother and received a response a few weeks later. They finally reunited in December of last year.
