Search for dad leads down twisted path

Finding a name
Marshall had tested his Y-chromosome DNA, the only genetic material that fathers pass directly to their sons. That meant his DNA profile might offer a clue to another paternally inherited trait — his real father’s surname.

Marshall logged into an Internet database. He entered his DNA profile, and was astounded to find that virtually every person who closely resembled him genetically was named Sizemore.

Marshall dug into the history of the Sizemore family. He learned that like many men named Sizemore his DNA profile wasn’t European, but typical of American Indians. Based on this evidence, genealogists hypothesize that perhaps one-third of Sizemores trace their ancestry back to a female colonist and a male Indian who lived in Virginia during the 17th century.

That was a fascinating piece of information, but it certainly didn’t tell Marshall who his father was. Now it was a matter of shuttling back and forth between past and present — identifying men named Sizemore who Marshall’s mother might have had contact with during the spring of 1948, when he was conceived, and then locating those men or their descendants today.

Marshall called the St. Louis County Library, where genealogists dug up old city and county directories that helped him find 13 Sizemore men of eligible age who probably lived in the area during the spring of 1948.

Then it was back to the present. Marshall looked in newspaper databases for obituaries of the men he’d identified. He tracked down their survivors using Internet telephone directories.

Eventually he lined up enough descendants of the original 13 candidates to determine if one of them was likely to have been his father.

But when the samples came back, it was the same as before. Some of the men matched one another. But none of them matched Marshall.

Other clues remembered
Again, Marshall could have stopped. Maybe he should have. But something still bothered him, something in the back of his mind. He had memories of things his mother had told him about her past. He remembered an old photograph of a man with a young boy on his knee. Marshall’s mother told him the man’s name was Gene, and that once they had been in love.

Eric Risberg / AP Martin Marshall has amassed boxes of family records at his home in San Francisco.

Maybe this Gene was Marshall’s father. Marshall recalled an incident from when he was a young boy. He and his mother had been at a church supper or some similar event. His mother stayed behind to help clean up, and a nice man named Gene drove Marshall home. When they arrived, Gene asked the young boy if he might like to come live with his family.

As a 4-year-old boy, Marshall had no idea what to make of such a question. But now ...

“This was a man who knew that I was his son,” Marshall says.

Could it be? If so, the man’s full name would have had to be Gene Sizemore. How many Gene Sizemores could there be in the United States?

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 60, it turns out, and none in Missouri. By consulting an Internet site that offers inexpensive background checks, however, Marshall discovered one Gene Sizemore who had previously lived in the state.

Not only that, this Gene Sizemore had once lived in the town of Louisiana, Mo. Hadn’t his mother told him back in 1981 that his father came from a town called Louisiana? Marshall had always assumed that she had been talking about Al Marshall.

But maybe she really meant this man. His real father. Gene.

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