This is a letter dated March 9th, 1996, which your grandfather received from a woman named Yvonne Barraud.
Would you please read the transcribed section?
"Dear Mr. Mahoney, I do apologize for taking so long to answer your letter of inquiries about your birth mother.
Jessie was private secretary to my father, Stafford Wellington Ripley," that's quite the name.
"Who was one of the partners in a very old, established legal firm.
She was with him for many years right up until she died.
It came as a terrible loss and shock to him.
He always referred to her as his first lieutenant, and she was a splendid secretary and grew to know the law as well as he did.
I remember her as a tall, well-built woman, held herself very well, and I think a very seriously-minded person, who never laughed much, but had numerous friends and enjoyed going to the theater and was a woman of great integrity.
You could be proud of her.
She visited a brother who lived in Whanganui quite often, and was fond of his children.
She was a splendid secretary and a very proud and nice woman, a mother you could be proud of.
Yours sincerely, Yvonne Barraud."
What do you think your grandfather felt when he read that?
Oh, I think it would be complicated.
Just that she was so nearby, and I think the thing about she visited a brother, I mean, Whanganui is so close to New Plymouth, it's an hour and a half.
So visiting her brother in Whanganui and being fond of his children.
The children, yeah.
It's so heartbreaking.
This was as far as John's search had taken him.
He died knowing his mother's name and a few details about her life, but nothing more.
We tried to go further.
Our researchers constructed a family tree for John.
But one prominent box remained empty.
We could not find a single document naming his father.
Luckily, we had another tool, DNA.
When we compared Melanie's mother's genetic profile to millions of other profiles in publicly available databases, we were able to identify three very strong matches.
And each of them appeared to be related to Melanie's mother through one of her father's parents.
Our experts then began to build out the family trees of those matches, and found that they all descend from one man, the same man, a man whom we believe to be your grandfather's biological father.
On the next page- Oh, my heart.
On the next page, we're going to see the same family tree.
Only this time, we will have added in the name of the man we believe to be your biological great-grandfather.
Are you ready?
Yeah.
Please turn the page.
Oh my goodness.
Archibald Allan?
Archibald Allan.
Wow.
Have you ever heard that name before?
No.
Unfortunately, this is where things got complicated.
When we tried to learn about this man named Archibald Allan, we came up empty.
We couldn't find a single record of his life anywhere.
It was as if he didn't exist, other than in DNA databases.
But then we noticed something intriguing, a wedding announcement for someone with a very similar name.
Wow.
Well, it's not an exact match, but in 1950, a man named Archibald Allan Sharpe married a woman named Susannah, or Connie, Brett, in the same city where your great-grandmother, Jessie, was living when your grandfather was conceived roughly 10 years later.
Wow.
So what do you think?
I mean, is it him?
It seems like, how many people are called Archibald?
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