The Phillips DNA Project News

05/07/2009: Adoptee Discovers Possible Italian Roots

A British man who was adopted at birth recently joined our Phillips DNA Project.  This man knew his birth mother's surname was Phillips, but had no idea about his birth father.  He was born 1942 in Kent.  His yDNA tested Haplogroup E1b1b1, which is a Mediteranean haplogroup not commonly found in England.  He has no matches in the Phillips DNA Project, but two Italian/Sicilian matches in the Recent Ancestral Origins database.  So what was a (young?) Sicilian doing in a little country village in Kent in 1942 during a war with Italy?  Our participant decided to investigate and discovered there was an Italian POW camp right down the road from where he was born!  Just a coincidence?  Or elementary, my dear Watson!

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