Finding Mary: The hunt begins

The Item today begins publishing a 10-part series by St. Mary’s High School Class of 1972 member Steve Matthews, titled “Finding Mary.” A persistent request by his daughter to try a 23andMe ancestry-search kit prompted Matthews to dig into his family’s history. The search sent him on a fascinating journey into the life of his mother, Mary Francis Hunt Matthews — a journey marked by abandonment, adoption, rejection and sacrifice. 

For eight generations, the Matthews family and descendants have lived in, worked in and went to school in Lynn, and some are buried in Lynn’s Pine Grove Cemetery. 

I was born in Lynn Hospital in 1954, as the second child of Lester D. Matthews Jr. and Mary Francis Matthews, and graduated from St. Mary’s High School Class of 1972. We lived on Parkland Avenue in a house owned by my parents for more than 50 years.

The story of the Matthews family’s eight generations was not something I, nor my three sisters, knew until recently. It was not something we discussed, other than some references to the Irish potato famine and the awful treatment suffered by Irish people upon arriving in Boston in the late 1800s. 

That limited history led us to conclude that the Irish part of the family came from both of our grandmothers. 

The only cousin I remembered seeing was a second cousin, Chris (and her mother, my dad’s first cousin), once a year around Christmas time. I did not know my other cousins, but like many families, other “family” would show up at weddings and funerals.

Both of my parents said they were each an only child. That was enough for us to believe that we did not have any first cousins, and that our small nuclear family with some friends was our world.

In another time and place that would be the end of that story. But in 2019, my daughter Lauri gave me a 23andMe ancestry-test kit for Father’s Day and, after some prodding from her, I opened it and joined the more than 26 million people in the United States who have tested their DNA to uncover their lineage. After a month or so, I got the results.

We believed we were of Irish, Welsh, and English descent. The results certainly included that, but I also showed 40-percent German ancestry. How was that possible?

The other interesting fact is that 23andMe shows you how much Neanderthal traits you possess. 

In fact, the results show I have 98-percent more Neanderthal traits than anyone that they have ever tested. So as no surprise to those who know me well, I’m a caveman!

I would like to say the German mystery on my genetic-test results gnawed at me and prompted me to get to the bottom of this conundrum. Initially, at least, it did not.

A few months passed and Lauri asked if I had gone on the 23andMe website again. When I said “no,” she told me I needed to get on the site. I logged on and found that there are more than 1,400 of my genetic relatives listed through my test results. 

Somewhere in that crowd were my mother’s relatives. That was the kick in the seat that I needed.  

Mary Francis “Hunt” Matthews, my mother, died in 2015. My sisters and I were blessed to have a loving and dedicated mother who focused on the four of us and extended that love to her grandchildren and great grandchildren. 

Throughout her life she was a leader of her Ladies Sodality organization at St. Pius V Church in Lynn. She was a member of the Lynn Historical Society and the Women’s Evening Club of Lynn.  

She married my father, Lester D. Matthews Jr., in 1950 and they celebrated more than 60 years of marriage until their respective deaths.

What we knew about my mother’s childhood was limited. 

She graduated from St. Mary’s High School as well. She had been lifelong friends with Mary (Chick) Held, a friendship which she cherished until her passing. My mother told us that she was born in St. Francis Hospital in Charleston, S.C. while her father was stationed in the Navy there. He was in the Navy for 20-plus years and rose to the rank of chief petty officer specializing in ship boilers.

If my mother suspected she was adopted, she never told me or my sisters. But she may have had some idea that something was awry. At times during her youth, and when she married, there were “problems” with her birth certificate. 

She said her parents told her that the hospital she was born in had burned down and that was the issue with this record problem. 

My sister Frances recalls that my mother asked her uncle Paul on his death bed if she was adopted, and he said that she was. Two of my sisters initially thought it possible that Edward Hunt was her biological father. They mention his tenderness toward her they witnessed on multiple occasions. 

We eventually grew to assume that my mother was adopted. My older sister, Frances White, assisted my mother by reaching out to St. Francis Hospital in Charleston, and to the South Carolina Department of Environmental Controls (DHEC) which holds vital statistics such as birth certificates. 

DHEC was completely unhelpful, citing a 100-year rule on releasing adoption information. The birth certificate that DHEC sent us included her last name, and showed that her parents first, middle and last names had been changed. Those changes were apparently made a few months after her birth, which would indicate an adoption.

Let me return for a minute to the beginning of my story.

I followed up the 23andMe test by ordering an Ancestry.com kit. What I learned from Ancestry.com was intriguing. 

Edward J. Hunt and Adeline Garrigan did not show as our grandparents, and no one related to them — up to our distant cousins — showed up as related to us either. 

That proved, unequivocally to me, that my mom was adopted.

My sisters Frances, Mary Ellen, Maureen and I discussed the truth we had found. Mary Ellen embarked with me onto a journey into our family’s past. Her persistence proved invaluable. I had a partner in this search and someone who was not afraid of the detailed work that this search would need.

When I told my daughter about my conversation with her aunts, she said, “Dad, now you are in the thrill of the hunt searching for answers.”

NEXT I reach out to my mother’s genetic relatives.