Today, I met a relative of mine thanks to widespread access to cheap DNA sequencing and the internet. A maternal uncle of mine has been into genealogy for quite some time. He made a profile on myheritage.com a few years ago. About six months ago, he was contacted by an Australian in her late forties who had discovered she was related to my uncle. They compared notes and it turned out she was a second cousin of his (and my mother's) who had become estranged from the paternal side of her family owing to circumstances but through no fault of her own.
The lady I met today is a descendant of an uncle of my maternal grandfather's who emigrated to North Queensland in the late 1930's. He and his wife bought land and started a sugarcane farm. The nearest big city to their area is Townsville. The reason for my great-great uncle's emigration was the fact that while his parents owned a farm they had twelve children and scarcely any land for each of their children to inherit or to use to start families of their own.
The first person a newly found relative of mine contacted was my uncle. My mother, my two uncles and the overseas visitor spent the last week in the region where they're from meeting relatives. Thanks to the contacts established on our shores, progress is made on the Australian side where her closer relatives live. Our meeting was very brief because of the very tight schedule she was on. I was visiting Tampere and I had come to the railway station to pick my mother up. I had a chance to say hello and exchange a few words when the train stopped at the station.
While it looks like this story is well on its way to a happy end, sometimes hard scientific evidence can lead to unpleasant surprises or confirmation of unpleasant suspicions. I still believe that in the vast majority of cases it is better to know the truth. Truth will set one free and open up new avenues to pursue. Who exactly needs to know is another thing altogether. But the question of one's origin of birth is something that tends to bother a lot of people who don't have complete clarity as to what it is or who have lost contact for one reason or another.
