The DNA test results are in. And I’m legit!

One of the more gratifying aspects of writing this blog is that I’ve been contacted by far-flung Dryden relatives I never heard of, who have tracked me down to say they enjoy reading tomdryden.com.

Some are amateur genealogists who have taken the time to determine how we are related. Apparently we are all descended from a common ancestor, Beowulf Dryden (or something like that), who lived near Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1400s in a forest known as Dredden's Wood.

Funny but, for most of my childhood I didn’t think I was a legitimate Dryden.

When I was five or so, my older sister told me I was adopted. She said our parents wanted another child, so the entire family went to a St. Louis orphanage to pick one out. She said mom and dad had their hearts set on a different baby but that she, after seeing me in a line-up, prevailed upon them to choose me.

She said I should be grateful because, if it weren’t for her, God knows where I would have wound up. (Even then I realized it wouldn’t have been the end of the world had I been adopted by a family who lived somewhere other than Auxvasse, Mo., a place so remote from civilization residents could only pick up signals from NBC and CBS stations. I grew up ABC-deprived, which has always put me at a disadvantage playing Trivial Pursuit. But I digress.)  

She ordered me not to mention any of this to my parents, saying they didn’t want me to know. Fearing I might be taken back to the orphanage, I didn’t.

When I was ten or eleven I blurted out to the woman who cooked my meals that I knew the truth and appreciated all she and her husband had done for me. She showed me my birth certificate, which listed her and my father as my real parents. But, after all those years of doubting, I never quite believed it.

Anyway, one of the Dryden relatives I’ve met through this blog is participating in a DNA test in which male Drydens rub the inside of their cheeks with a brush to dislodge cells, collect the cells on giant Q-tips, and mail them to a lab for analysis. The purpose? Beats the hell out of me – I had to take Biology 101 twice – but I agreed to join in.

The results of my test came yesterday and, other than proving I’m an honest-to-God Dryden who is blood-related to other Drydens worldwide, the scientific explanation that arrived with it was gobbledygook. So I emailed another distant relative who’s overseeing the tests. She wrote back that, “We are on the road to being able to identify where the ancient ancestors of the Drydens were before they made their way to Britain. Someday, we'll be able to say whether they were ancient Celts (not likely), or Goths (not likely) or something like the Bell-Beaker tribes (somewhat quite likely) who spread out in the European continent some 5,000+ years ago.”

For all I know it will prove we were Neanderthals.

Whatever, I’m proud I can now say with 100 percent certainty that I’m a blood-relative of some accomplished Drydens, including John, England’s first poet laureate. (That’s where my penchant for words must come from. Though I’m sure he would have never ended a sentence with a preposition as I just did.) And Hugh, a rocket scientist for whom NASA’s flight research center is named. Not to mention Virginia, the original Beverly Hills Housewife, who married the founder of Robinson’s department store in L.A. and built Beverly Hills’ first mansion whose opulent grounds are now open to the public.

That said, I’ve got to take the good relatives with the bad.

In addition to being related to cousins Johnnie, Hughie and Ginnie (that’s how I think of them now that I’m sure we’re kinfolk), I now know I’m definitely related to Henry Dryden, my grandfather’s half-brother whose mule, while pulling a wagon, balked crossing train tracks in High Hill, Mo., early in the last century. After trying unsuccessfully to get the mule to move and becoming increasingly enraged, Henry took his axe, split the mule’s head, then burned down his wagon and its contents. 

Another not-too-distant relative is Nathaniel Dryden, a lawyer known for his courtroom eloquence. He was the first attorney to gain the conviction, and hanging, of a white man for killing a black, a crime that inspired the song Stagger Lee. An alcoholic and morphine addict, Nat was known as the "wickedest man in Missouri." An unsolicited love note from an infatuated shop girl forced cousin Nat to admit to a second secret marriage which came as a surprise to his wife and four daughters. 

From relatives I’ve met through this blog, I’ve learned of other Drydens who were equally – how to put this? – "special."

My favorite line from The Godfather was uttered by Mama Corleone, who told Michael, “You can never lose your family.” And now that I know I’m a legit Dryden, I can’t … even if I want to lose some of them.

My oldest son got married two weeks ago. It’s up to him to carry our particular branch of the Dryden family tree forward.

A little grandson – perhaps he and his wife could name him Beowulf Thomas – would be a nice addition one of these days. 

But then, they just got married, so I'm not going to pressure them.