Building A Mystery

Over the years I have tried, off and on, to piece together what happened and where everything went so wrong. For a number of years I was too busy with babies, then toddlers, then homeschooling to really research, dig into my family tree, or write down my story. But I picked it up again in November of 2022 when I joined Ancestry.com. I didn’t make the jump to taking a DNA test but I spent days researching and building my family tree. 

And it was fascinating! On the first day I learned that my (probably) biological father had my birth certificate father in his family tree. Yup. I was searching for my birth certificate father to see what I could find out about him and that’s how I found my biological father and his family tree on Ancestry. From there I found what looked like a marriage between my biological father and my mother, which blew my mind. There it was, a marriage license for just a couple of weeks before I was born. 

I found my grandfather’s death certificate on familysearch.org and added that to my family tree on Ancestry. I also found an entry on Family Search that said my grandmother was deceased, which was a good reminder that not every entry on these sites is completely accurate. And that marriage license? I only ever found a license, not any record of them getting married. 

During this time I was listening to podcasts like Family Secrets and that’s where I got the idea to request my birth and childhood medical records. Somehow that had never occurred to me. But that wouldn’t prove to be as simple as you'd think. Records from over 40 years ago aren’t easily accessible and it took a few tries to get them and that takes us to January of 2023. 

I took the information I got from my father’s Ancestry account and found his pinterest page. He had boards about living with a traumatic brain injury and seizures, gardening, recipes, inspirational quotes, and a few about guns. Actually, I just found it again and I see stuff on homesteading, canning, herbs, and hunting. Drop the hunting and in different circumstances we’d probably have a lot to talk about. That was a glimpse into his interests, though he hadn’t pinned anything in several years, and I was encouraged enough to keep digging. 

Somehow I also found his LinkedIn page and that information confused me at the time. He wrote that he worked for NC State and I assumed the university, but I’d later find out he meant the state of North Carolina. 

I worked up the courage to message my father on Ancestry. Here’s what I wrote:

“Dear XXXXXX XXXXX,

I hope you have been well and realize hearing from me might come as a bit of a surprise.

I have gotten interested in genealogy and came across your family tree on ancestry while creating my own. I feel like there is a lot I still don’t know and am hoping you would be willing to share what you remember.

Sincerely,

Tina”

He didn’t respond but I wasn’t surprised because I could see that he wasn’t terribly active on the site. But I assumed that any message on Ancestry would trigger an email alert and he’d see that. 

During this time, even though I didn’t have a facebook account, I was able to find my biological father, his new wife, his old wife,  and my half-sister. Not only that, I found my mother’s accounts. I didn’t make contact with anyone but I was looking at their accounts and trying to gather the courage to make contact with my father’s side. What kind of people were they? What was my father like now? What was his new wife like? Would she be amenable to him hearing from me? What was my half-sister like? Did she know about me? How would she take it if I made contact?

Backing up a bit, back to November 2022… I sent a letter to my mother’s second (third?) husband, the stepfather that stepped up. But we had lost touch in 2007 and around Thanksgiving, I mailed him a letter. It came back as undeliverable and I’d later learn that was because he didn’t have a mailbox. By the time it bounced back to me, it was nearing Christmas and I didn’t want to try again in case he didn’t want to hear from me. The last thing I wanted to do was ruin anyone’s holidays so I waited until January to attempt contact again. 

January 2023… I’m almost embarrassed of myself. I created a facebook account and I was checking every morning to see what my father had posted. If I didn’t know better, I would swear that he knew I was considering making contact because he was introspective in his posts. I finally worked up the courage on January 23, 2023 and sent him the same message as the one I’d sent him on Ancestry.com. 

No response. 

In the meantime I was doing research and compiling my notes. I had a list of leads. My childhood pediatrician, the doctor that delivered me, my requests to two hospitals for birth records, and a request for my school records to see if there was anything in there. On February 6, 2023 I sent another letter to my step-father’s P.O. Box that I’d located in all of my research. 

I still didn’t get a response from my father on facebook, but I just assumed he was either ignoring it or considering if/how to respond. On January 25th he wrote a long post about an old car of his and his recollection of working on it with his father. He mentioned that his memory was “porous” and how he had little patience when he was younger and even less now. Reading that at the time put a little bit of a damper on pushing forward with him. 

I can’t say that I had a whole lot of patience myself. I wrote about my own back pain and how I wasn’t getting any sleep. Perimenopause was kicking my tail! I was routinely waking up at unholy hours of the morning, like 3 am, 4 am and not being able to get back to sleep. 

But those pre-dawn hours were some excellent opportunities for thinking. I thought about the podcasts I was listening to, the memoirs I was reading, everyone’s facebook posts, and everything I thought I knew. I considered applying to go on a podcast in hopes of finding more information. I was still researching most days to see what I could find on Ancestry and other genealogy websites. It must have been one of these mornings when it occurred to me that I could post on reddit to see if anyone knew anything. 

With nothing to lose, on January 27, 2023 I posted on the r/charlotte subreddit. I didn’t save my post but in my notes I said I posted in hopes of finding anyone who knew anyone connected with my birth and I mentioned the baby book I’d found that listed my birth year as 1978 rather than 1980. That damned baby book has been stuck in my head since I found it over 20 years ago. 

In 2004 or so I was at my grandmother’s house looking in the attic for something when I came across a blue baby book that told the story of a baby born to my mother in 1978, two years before my birth certificate says I was born. I looked through it while sitting in my childhood room and here in this book was a child born in 1978, walking in 1979. My mind didn’t take in much more information than that and I asked my grandmother why the years were off. She told me that my mother was on painkillers from childbirth and I accepted that explanation and let it go. She took the book and I never saw it again. But 1978? That lined up with all the stories I’d been told about her getting pregnant with me at 16. 

Back to my reddit post - I was almost immediately contacted by someone claiming to be a private investigator. I talked to that person while responding to reddit comments. No one knew much, but people were making suggestions of avenues to try next. The private investigator, with just my first name and maiden name, claimed to have found birth records in March of 1978. 

Here’s what they wrote:

“Are you Tina Roggenkamp? If not, you may have a sister lol

Okay, so I understand you may be a little apprehensive about your name if you are Tina, but it looks like you have good reason to think something may be off with your birthdate. 

XXXXX Freeman gave birth  03/1978

Your birth date is showing 03/1980”

Talk about a potential bombshell! I was still doing my facebook research and messaged several people related to my birth certificate father. I pondered who the 1978 baby might be. Or could I have been born in 1978? With everything else having been a lie, I had no way of knowing what, if anything, I had ever been told was the truth. I considered that if I wasn’t the 1978 baby, maybe that baby had died. Maybe the court took the 1978 baby. I was open to considering any explanation but without any solid evidence, I was at a dead end. 

The next day I contacted private investigators. And I finally ordered the DNA test kit from Ancestry.