I took a £35 MyHeritage.com DNA test because I was suspicious about my ‘olive skin’… and I discovered a whole NEW family in Australia
- EXCLUSIVE: Julie Mamo from Australia and Julie Ansell from Kent met for the first time
- MailOnline reveal full sequence of events which led to sisters tracing each other
A bank manager has told how he spent £35 on a DNA test to investigate his ancestry and ended up unearthing a secret part of his family history.
Jason Fisher, 34, splashed out on the MyHeritage.com test because he wanted to find out more about his ethnic background to try and explain his ‘olive complexion’.
But incredibly the test led to him discovering an aunt and a cousin in Australia when he previously did not even know that they existed.
MailOnline can now reveal the full astonishing story about how he and the rest of his family came to meet up with his long lost aunt for the first time.
The reunion only happened after father-of-three Jason ordered the £35 test as he was curious about where his ancestors came from because he tanned easily.
Jason Fisher, 34, splashed out on a MyHeritage.com test because he wanted to find out more about his ‘olive complexion’. Incredibly, the test led to him discovering an aunt and a cousin in Australia when he previously did not even know that they existed
Julie Mamo, from Australia, connected with her sister 60 years later. She made headlines this week following the DNA test
MyHeritage.com sent him a kit which involved swabbing his cheek on the inside and placing it in a vial to send to the genealogy website’s laboratory in Texas.
When he was emailed the result a few weeks later last August, it confirmed that he was around 60 per cent European, with some Scandinavian ancestry and ‘a bit of Central Asian’.
But there was also an unexpected bonus after it compared his DNA against samples of 7 million other people across the world on the MyHeritage.com database.
The results showed that he had a 70 per cent DNA match to a half-sister in the UK and an aunt on his mother’s side of his family who he already knew about.
But Jason was puzzled to see that he had a 90 per cent match to a woman called Julie Mamo, 66, and her daughter Louise Marland, 49, from Gawler near Adelaide, Australia.
He had never heard of the pair before and could not understand how their DNA was so similar to his when they lived 10,045 miles apart.
In an astonishing coincidence just a week later, Ms Marland posted a message on the Facebook page for Aylesham, Kent, asking if anyone could help her find her mother’s family.
Jason who belonged to the same Facebook group instantly recognised her name as being one of the mystery women who was a close match for his DNA profile.
Julie Mamo (second left) and Julie Ansell (centre) with niece Jess, brother Tes, and nephew Jason, when they all met up in May this year
Julie Mamo (left), her daughter Louise and her long lost sister Julie Ansell
They exchanged Facebook messages, and she told him that her mother had been adopted in Kent and had no idea who her real parents were.
Jason then spoke to his aunt Julie Ansell, 64, of St Margaret’s at Cliffe, near Dover, to ask if she knew what his family link to Ms Mamo could be.
Ms Ansell told him how her mother Lillian Fisher had revealed to her when she 12-years-old that she had given birth to a daughter at the age of 17 and had her adopted.
Lillian had then gone on to have her daughter Ms Ansell, and three sons from a marriage and two other relationships.
Jason said: ‘The adoption was a bit of a family secret because my nan did not tell anyone else. My aunt Julie also never talked about having a sister.
‘But once I was told this, it all became clear that Julie in Australia was my nan’s first daughter and my aunt.
‘It looks like she named her second daughter Julie because she felt guilty about giving up her first daughter who had that name.
‘I went back to Louise and told her that I thought I had cracked it. Then she sent me a picture of her mum, and I was struck by how much she looked like my nan.’
Julie Mamo being christened. The DNA test was bought for Ms Mamo as a Christmas present in 2021
Julie Mamo (right) and her birth mother Lillian
It turned to that Ms Mamo had been adopted when she was just nine days old by a couple in Kent who later ended up emigrating to Australia with her.
Ms Mamo knew she had been adopted, but had no idea of the identity of her birth mother until Jason submitted his DNA test.
She had earlier gone through the same process of getting her DNA tested by MyHeritage.com in the hope that it might her find some relatives.
The test was bought for her as a Christmas present in 2021 by her daughter who also paid for her own test, but it initially revealed no matches.
It was only when Jason had his test results uploaded that the link was found to his aunt and cousin.
Jason’s grandmother died aged 80 in 2019, meaning that mother-of-three Ms Mamo who is separated from her husband was never able to meet her real mother.
But she became firm friends with her sister Ms Ansell, after they Facetime messaged each other and began speaking almost every night.
Mother-of-three Ms Ansell flew over to Australia to meet her sister in May this year.
They stayed together for three weeks before both flying back to the UK so that Ms Mamo could meet other relatives including Jason, and members of her adoptive family.
Ms Mamo is flying home on Sunday, but the sisters plan to be reunited again next year when they want to spend a month together in Bali.
Ms Ansell said that she and her sister had also discovered that they had a shared love of collecting wooden craft goods
Jason said: ‘The whole thing has been madness. I have gained myself an aunt and a cousin just by having a DNA test.
‘I would never have thought in a million years that this was going to happen, simply by me trying to find out why I had olive coloured skin.
‘It has always been the case that I can sit out in the sun and go brown in half an hour while other people go red.
‘It cost me £35 to find this out and I got an auntie and cousin who are the best.
‘When you have a stranger come into your life, you think how is it going to go and she’s just slotted in.’
Ms Ansell, a full time carer, recalled how she knew nothing about having an adopted sister until her mother told her when she was 12.
She said: ‘She revealed she had this baby called Julie when she was 17 and had to give her up. I suppose I was a little bit shocked to hear it.
‘But I didn’t tell anyone and it was never really mentioned again. I became a teenager and I didn’t give it a lot more thought.
‘When I first spoke to Julie on the video link, we hit it off straight away. We just get on, we don’t even try, it’s no effort. We have just slotted into each other’s lives like a jigsaw puzzle.
‘She is the spitting image of our mum with the same mannerisms and facial expressions. It’s really spooky how they are so alike. She even speaks and laughs like our mum did.
‘People say I am like my Mum, but my sister is like a carbon copy. All my kids say it is uncanny how they are so alike when they never knew each other.
‘There are also odd little similarities between us. We both liked the taste of coal and putting Vicks Vaporub on our tongues when we were kids.’
Ms Ansell said that she and her sister had also discovered that they had a shared love of collecting wooden craft goods.
She added: ‘It is just a shame that mum has passed. I am sure she would have been beside herself to see her.
‘Having Julie back here has been great for our family. I didn’t have a very close relationship with my brother Ted before, but now he is opening up about it.
‘Good things have come out of it. We are closer as a family.’
Ms Ansell said her mother had got pregnant with her after a brief affair with a man she believed was an American airman called Albert Hawkins who came from Texas.
She said: ‘They split up when she was pregnant with me and she never saw him again. I did try tracing him, but I just hit brick walls.
‘I once went to a spiritualist and she told me that there was a man who was a father figure to me who was surrounded by aviation and aircraft.
‘That convinced me she was talking about my father and that he must have died.’
Ms Ansell said her mother got together with her stepfather Eddie Fisher while pregnant with her.
Ms Mamo is flying home on Sunday, but the sisters plan to be reunited again next year when they want to spend a month together in Bali
They later married and had two sons together before splitting when she was aged seven. Her mother had her third son with another man.
Meanwhile Ms Mamo emigrated to Australia with her adoptive parents David and Mavis Holland when she was aged 12 in 1969.
Ms Ansell said that Mavis, now 90, had revealed that her sister had not been given a name before she was handed over for adoption.
She said: ‘She told us that she wanted to call her baby Julie or Stephen. I wonder if my mum overheard her parents talking about her baby being called Julie and then she decided to use the name for me.’
Ms Mamo said she had been told by her adoptive mother when she was aged 12 that she had been adopted.
She said: ‘I was told that my father was a soldier and my mum was too young to look after me so I got put up for adoption. That is all I knew.
‘The adoption was arranged by my adoptive mother’s parents and my great grandmother who ran the spiritualist church in Deal.
‘They adopted me and my older brother because they didn’t think they could have children, but a few years down the track they had twins and another son, so they landed up with five children.
‘We went to Australia as £10 poms just before my 13th birthday. I remember we arrived on the day of the Moon landing.
Julie Mamo (pictured as a baby) moved far away from her biological mother after her adoptive parents Mavis and David Holland (pictured with her) emigrated to Australia when she was still a child
‘I was gobsmacked when we heard from Jason, and later when we realised he was my nephew.
‘I was nervous about talking to my sister for the first time. I thought, ‘Is she going to be posh or like me?’ But as soon as we got talking, it was the easiest thing in the world. It is like we have known each other for ever.
‘Discovering my birth family over here is brilliant. Everybody has accepted everybody. It has been a wonderful experience.
‘I keep hearing everyone saying I am like my mum. I just wish I could have seen her before she died.
‘It is still very surreal. It’s like my butterflies have got butterflies. I’ve got a sister and I’ve never had a sister. I’ve never been an auntie and now I’m an auntie. It’s amazing, unreal and magic.’
The two sisters are now waiting for the results from their own DNA tests to see if they share the same father. They admit it is unlikely to be the case, but say that ‘anything is possible’.
Ms Mamo’s daughter Louise said: ‘She’s always wanted to find her biological family. Once we started talking with Jason, we realised we were family.
‘It’s just a shame we were a few years late to meet my nan who died in 2019. It has changed my mum’s life and it is unbelievable what it has done for her.
The pair’s nephew, Jason Fisher, found he had a 90 per cent match from genealogy site MyHeritage.com with Ms Memo despite not knowing who she was. Pictured: Julie Mamo as a young girl
Ms Mamo was adopted when she was just nine days old after her unmarried 17-year-old mother, Lilian Fisher, gave her up in 1956
‘I can see my mum belongs in the UK, she has found her place and her identity. It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t connected on social media.’
Sarah Vanunu, a spokesperson for MyHeritage.com which was set up nearly 20-years-ago, said it now had the DNA results of 7 million people from all around the world.
She said: ‘Some people are tested with us and others have uploaded their DNA details after being tested by a different provider.
‘All the uploaded DNA results are automatically compared to those we already have so people can see if they are related.
‘If you find you are an interesting match with someone, you can reach out to them on the platform.
‘But the test results also reveal the ethnic breakdown of a person’s DNA. We have identified 2,100 different ethnic regions.
‘Having your DNA tested is a bit like a Covid test. You just swab the side of your cheek and send it to our lab in Texas. You get the results emailed back to you in three or four weeks.
‘We have seen many stories like this with people finding out they are related – but it is not often that you get sisters who did not know about each other.
‘Julie in Australia and her sister Julie in Kent are so similar. They have the same sense of humour and like to collect things like wooden jewellery.
‘When I was talking to them on video calls, I even noticed that they were holding coffee cups the same way with their little finger.
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