Woman helps long-lost cousin find biological father after 50 years

"When I saw the photo of him, I knew instantly that her father was my great-uncle"

Someday, Kenyon also hopes to visit Rivera and her son Daniel – named after his long-lost grandfather - in Panama but doesn’t expect her travels to end there (Getty Images)

Florida resident Shavonne Kenyon has been researching her family history for the past decade in a bid to find out how far her roots in the United States go.

Throughout her Ancestry journey, she has found records of ancestors that travelled on the Mayflower and discovered relatives who fought on both sides of the Civil War.

However, Kenyon’s most life-changing breakthrough came when a woman called Nancy contacted her looking for her long-lost father.

Nancy Rivera, from Panamá, contacted Kenyon after being matched by AncestryDNA as her second cousin.

She revealed that she had never met her father and with just one photograph of him in her possession, Rivera was desperate for any information she could find.

Shavonne Kenyon

To Kenyon’s amazement, the man pictured in Rivera’s photograph was indeed her great uncle, Daniel Poulson, who had lived in Panama in the early 1960s but since sadly passed away.

“When Nancy first reached out to me, I was a bit sceptical. I've had other people reach out to me with vague connections but Nancy had details that were very specific to my family,” Kenyon told The Independent.

“Once I was certain that we were cousins, I felt excited, especially for her. I knew that she had a lot of questions and a void in her life not knowing where she came from or who her family is.

Rivera reached out to Kenyon with a photo of her long-lost father (Shavonne Kenyon)

“I was so thrilled and blessed to be able to be the one to fill in the blanks.”

After months of conversing online the duo have made plans to meet in person this summer in California where Kenyon hopes to introduce Rivera to other relatives including her cousin and aunt - more family members that, without the help of AncestryDNA, she would have never known about.

“Nancy missed out on creating memories with her family but I hope to be able to give her some items that her father gave to his mother - her grandmother - so that Nancy can at least have something tangible as a part of her family,” Kenyon explains.

AncestryDNA matched Shavonne and Nancy as second cousins with "extremely high" confidence (Shavonne Kenyon)

Someday, Kenyon also hopes to visit Rivera and her son Daniel – named after his long-lost grandfather - in Panama but doesn’t expect her travels to end there.

Since receiving her AncestryDNA results Kenyon has visited lots of places where her ancestors had an influence in settling, such as the Quaker Meeting House in Flushing, Queens.

However, she hopes that she will one day make it to England to visit the church in Lancashire where her great-great-great-grandparents got married.

Kenyon named her son Daniel after her long-lost father (Shavonne Kenyon)

“I love travelling and I love history so I don't think this ancestry journey is even close to complete,” she adds.

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