Discovering A Paternal Half-brother At 23andme

I received a message from a relative on 23andme just saying "Hey". It was from a man named Mclain in Tennessee.

I checked out what our relationship is. It says "Half Brother" on my father's side!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shared DNA: 24.39% 1815cM

My father Lawrence Nolan Scott that I grew up not knowing had another son 5 years after I was born!!!

I grew up not knowing that I have a half brother!

I already knew that my father had a daughter before he met my mother.

He was born and raised in Oregon like his mother and maternal grandparents were. I was born and raised in California like my mother, both her parents, and both her paternal grandparents. Our father was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He had relocated to Los Angeles, California to be with one of his paternal uncles. Then he later lived in my birthplace San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. He was found dead in Littlerock, California in 1993. I found out about his death on New Year's Eve 2002/2003.

Mclain was adopted by a European American couple.

Mclain has a wife, a son, and a daughter. Therefore, I am a brother-in-law and an uncle.

Ethnic comparisons

(23andme includes X Chromosome)

His European is 58.4% and mine is 47.5% with 43.2% inherited from my mother and 4.3% inherited from my father

His Sub Saharan African is 40.9% and mine is 49.7% with 43.4% inherited from my father and 6.3% inherited from my mother

His Indigenous American is 0.2% and mine is 1.7% with 1.0% inherited from my mother and 0.7% inherited from my father

His Chinese & Southeast Asian is 0.0% and mine is 0.3% with all of it inherited from my father

His Northern West Asian is 0.0% and mine is 0.6% with all of it inherited from my mother.

His North African is 0.2% and mine is 0.0%

His Unassigned is 0.2% and mine is 0.2% with all of it inherited from my mother

Our father was African American.

His mother was European American.

My mother's ancestry is quite mixed. Her paternal grandfather was a first generation Cape Verdean (Portuguese and Sub Saharan African) American. Her paternal grandmother was the daughter of a Puerto Rican (Spanish, Sub Saharan African, Taino) man and a Hawaiian-born woman whose parents were Madeiran (Portuguese with some Sub Saharan African) immigrants. Her maternal grandfather's ancestry was Colonial European American of mostly English with some German, Swiss, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and Frisian. Her maternal grandmother was first generation Ashkenazi Jewish American with a father born in Romania and a mother born in Courland in an area in the Russian Empire that became Latvia.

23andme shows her as 86.3% European, 10.1% Sub Saharan African, 1.9% Indigenous American, 1.0% Northern West Asian, 0.2% Arab, Egyptian & Levantine, 0.2% Broadly Western Asian & North African, and 0.3% Unassigned.

Both of us have European Mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. His is H6a1b2. 23andme shows mine as J1c, but FamilyTreeDNA shows a more refined haplogroup of J1c14. https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2021/08/my-mitochondrial-dna-haplogroup-j1c14.html

Of course, we share the same Y DNA haplogroup E-M85 which is Sub Saharan African. Family TreeDNA testing shows as more refined haplogroup of E-BY101982 https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2022/01/my-y-dna-haplogroup-e-by71723.html

He has more Neanderthal ancestry than 2% of 23andme customers, and I have more Neanderthal ancestry than 3% of 23andme customers. Surprisingly, I have a little more Neanderthal ancestry even though he has more Eurasian ancestry.

Both of his maternal grandparents were born in Oregon which I know that my father was living in.

He and I share predominantly Sub Saharan African DNA along with some European DNA and tiny bit of Indigenous American DNA.

Our longest shared segment is 142.14 cM at location 1-3839770 on Chromosome 4

Our shortest shared segment is 5.5 cM at location 1-27711752 on Chromosome 3

We share European segments on Chromosomes 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 17, 20.

The European segments that we share on Chromosomes 5, 8, 15, and 20 are people that we match with Acadian ancestry.

The longest shared European DNA segment is on Chromosome 5, and that's where we match people with Acadian ancestry.

We share an Indigenous American segment on Chromosome 6, and it's right next to a European segment. Our father's maternal half-sister Carrie matches in the same location on the European Chromosome 5 and 15 segments as well as the European and Indigenous American Chromosome 6 segments.

Our paternal grandmother Mary Alice (Gaines) Simmons' maternal grandfather James Cross was the son of an African American slave woman Laura and a European American man that was a son of North Carolina-born English American plantation/slaveowner Benjamin Cross and a Southern Louisiana-born 3/4 Acadian woman Anastasia Bourgeois. The vast majority of my paternal European segment matches are through shared Acadian ancestry. The Acadians are such an endogamous people that I believe that everybody that has Acadian ancestry are related to each other through at least one shared pair of 17th Century French ancestors.

Chromosome 5 88902545 -173011497 (88236942 - 173267556 is Acadian)

Chromosome 8 140974670 - 146067054 (139208813 - 146293414 is Acadian)

Chromosome 15 58234213 - 99127913 (57602999 - 69115354 is Acadian)

Chromosome 20 1704114 - 56322962 (15461635 - 42802736 is Acadian)

Total population of people with Acadian ancestry

~500,000 – 2,000,000

Regions with significant populations

United States - 901,260

Canada - 96,145[ or at least 500,000

France - 20,400

Quebec, Canada - 32,950

New Brunswick, Canada - 25,400