DNA Kit Helps Reunite Mom With Daughter She Thought Died At Birth Almost 70 Years Ago

TAMPA, FL — Thanks to a DNA test Christmas gift, an elderly woman was able to reunite with the daughter she was led to believe had died during childbirth almost 70 years before.

On May 12, 1949, Genevieve Purinton was 18 and unmarried when she had her daughter at the now-closed St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital in Gary, Indiana. She had already decided the perfect name for her baby would be Margaret Ann in honor of a polio-stricken teacher she admired for her tough spirit.

But “when I said I wanted to see the baby, they told me she died," she explained to WTVT-TV.

Instead, a couple from Southern California secretly adopted the very much alive newborn with the help of a doctor working at the hospital, and she grew up as Connie Moultroup.

Purinton's signature is on the adoption papers from the hospital, but she admits, “I had no idea what I signed."

“I remember being five years old and wishing I could find my mother,” Moultroup, 69, said of how the separation affected her.

She would take a major step toward realizing her childhood hope after receiving an Ancestry DNA kit as a gift last Christmas. When she got the results, she discovered a cousin and got in touch.

“I said, ‘Well, here’s my mother’s given name,’” recalled Moultroup, a massage therapist and former nurse now living in Richmond, Vermont. “And she said, ‘Oh, that’s my aunt,’ and, ‘Oh, by the way, she’s still alive.’”

The mother and daughter finally met each other for the first time at an emotional reunion in Tampa on December 3. Maltroup told The New York Times “it was a bawlfest” and their connection “was almost instantaneous.”

They had a lot to catch up on and learn about each other, too, like the fact they both enjoyed crocheting and cooking, and that 88-year-old Purinton, who never had any other kids because she had undergone a hysterectomy, now has a granddaughter and two great-grandchildren.

And Moultroup revealed she is “super excited” to attend one more special reunion. In January, she’s heading to Pennsylvania to meet her biological dad’s two daughters — her half sisters. “I’ve never had siblings!” she said.

Read more: WTVT-TV, The New York Times