On a bright afternoon in Suwanee last winter, two days after Christmas, Lewis Thompson sat on the couch of an Airbnb as loads of family members walked by. His children were there. And even his ex-wife.
But most of them were his siblings and their children. At 62, he’d never met any of them in person. He didn’t even know they existed until a few years ago. Yet, Thompson, wearing a bright floral shirt and jeans, often blended right in as he smoked cigars and joked around with his siblings. But his eyes were pensive, taking it all in.
“It’s been unreal, but it also has been natural,” Thompson said.
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Now, roughly a year later, Thompson still feels that way. He’s still processing the fact that an only child now has seven siblings (one of whom died last year) and too many nieces and nephews to count. A resident of Melbourne, Australia, Thompson found his family via an Ancestry DNA test in 2021. He took the test on a whim, with encouragement from his wife Christine.
Thompson grew up in Harlem, New York, and didn’t know that the couple who was raising him weren’t his biological parents until he was 14. In 1974, George, the person he thought was his dad, passed away. Emily, whom he thought was his mom, developed early signs of dementia, so a family friend took Thompson in. After his dad’s death, Thompson and the family friend sought benefits to help raise him given his dad was a World War II veteran. That’s when he received the life-altering news.
He wasn’t eligible for benefits because his birth certificate was fake.
“That’s the first inkling that something wasn’t quite right,” Thompson said.
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Thompson received his real birth certificate, which listed Betty Jones as his biological mother and Lewis Kelvin Jones as his real name. It also stated that his mother had four children prior to Thompson’s birth. The father’s portion was empty. He was told by the family friend that his dad had an ex-girlfriend who had a lot of kids, and he didn’t think she could raise them, so he took him in. Twenty years later, he decided to visit the address listed on his birth certificate, but he hit a dead end.
“The building was condemned, and nobody knew her, so I just ran out of options, really. I was a young man, so I just let it go.”
He later moved to California (where he got his driver’s license after needing to legally change his name to Lewis Thompson), got married, had children, got divorced, got married again (this time, to his current wife, Christine) and moved to his wife’s home country of Australia. Thompson has lived there for 14 years and works for a plumbing company.
He went on with his life. Sure, he had questions, but anyone who would know anything about his birth was dead.
Still, he felt like something was missing.
“Lewis is the sort of person who always says he’s fine, everything’s fine,” said Christine Finegan, Thompson’s wife. “We’d talk about it sometimes — the fact that he had siblings somewhere — but he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. He’d exhausted all avenues, so I think he just put it away and stopped thinking about it, or mainly stopped talking about it. But I think that’s the sort of thing you don’t stop thinking about.”
Credit: Courtesy of Percival Lammie
Credit: Courtesy of Percival Lammie
After taking the Ancestry DNA kit, he didn’t think anything of it, but he eventually got a message that he had a first cousin. He reached out, didn’t hear anything back for a while and later received a chilling message: “Hey, I just found your message, and it is mind-blowing. I’m Betty’s son.”
Thompson said he just stared at the message for a few minutes. He was perplexed.
“And that’s how it all started. ... I didn’t have a clue who they were, but they knew me,” Thompson said.
Percival Lammie, Thompson’s younger brother, was on the other end of that Ancestry message.
“I knew who he was right away,” said Lammie, who lives in Monterey, California.
Keeping the family close
Growing up in Harlem, Lammie and his siblings were never sure how Thompson disappeared from the family. As the story goes, they were raised by a single mom who’d always drop her kids off at the homes of friends and neighbors when she’d give birth. When it was time for Thompson’s sister, Violet, to be born, he was left with a family friend and never seen again. Thompson was two. None of the siblings had much recollection of Thompson, the fifth oldest, when he was younger. Their mom, Betty Jones, passed away in 2012.
“It was just something I heard. That was the story,” said Wanda Welcome, Thompson’s oldest sister who lives in Forest Park. “Even when I got older, I didn’t hear anything differently when I asked. I didn’t press and ask a whole lot of questions. This is what she said. That was it. It’s a different time. We didn’t question our mom. We don’t interrogate her.”
But although their mom didn’t say much about Thompson and his whereabouts, Lammie and Welcome said she’d never want them to forget about him.
“When blessing the food, I remember [my mom] mentioning Lewis,” Lammie said. “I didn’t have a point of reference because Lewis was gone before I was even born, so I was like who is this Lewis. Later on, I found out what was going on. But she kept his name alive.”
Credit: Anthony Black
Credit: Anthony Black
Connecting with Thompson for the first time was the impetus for Lammie ensuring the family stayed in touch. Prior to discovering Thompson, the siblings would go years without seeing each other and weren’t regularly communicating. Lammie said their mom raised them as if they were only children and didn’t want them to rely on anyone, so that’s why they weren’t as close. Additionally, all of them are scattered across the United States (with siblings living in Georgia, California, Illinois, Texas, New York, etc).
That’s why Lammie chose Georgia as a central location for everyone to not only meet Thompson, but to re-connect with the siblings they were raised with. He now understands the importance of family.
Finding Thompson has brought the family closer. Since communicating with Thompson, the family regularly hosts monthly Zoom check-ins. They started a spreadsheet that lists each family member’s personal information. Although they won’t have another in-person gathering this year, they do plan to have a family reunion in Georgia next summer.
Lammie admits that Thompson living in Australia makes it hard to connect, but they try to maintain communication. He and his wife, an avid tennis fan, plan to eventually visit Thompson while attending the Australian Open.
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Credit: Christina Matacotta
“We do want him to understand that he’s a part of this family no matter what’s going on. I used Lewis as a catalyst. It has enriched our lives that we have a better connection of who I am, who everyone is and how they play a role in our lives.”
Today, Thompson said he looks forward to the monthly Zoom calls with his brothers and sisters — words he’d never used before. He’s sad that he didn’t get a chance to meet his biological mom before she died. Everything still feels a bit surreal for him, but he feels a sense of belonging now. There are still unanswered questions, but he doesn’t have that same void in his heart that he grew up with.
Thompson is more concerned about developing relationship with his new family. During the Zoom calls, he’s learned fascinating tidbits. He and his siblings lived blocks away from each other as children, frequented the same stores and he shared the same barber as his brother. That’s the source of his joy now, according to his wife: “I noticed an instance change in him. He just seemed happier. I think there’d always been a hole that must’ve been weighing on him.”
“I have to accept the fact that there are many questions that I will not have answers to,” Thompson said. “The family just doesn’t have any answers ... but I’m very grateful that I found them.”
