My story was posted 5 months ago under the same tittle (without the "update").

This is very complicated for me - but maybe it's not for one of you. I wouldn't blame any of you though, if you bailed half way through!

I've made progress in trying to determine if Howard (66 year old at the time of my birth) was indeed my father.

I don't think so.

So, Howard had 5 daughters. I do not match any of the husbands of these 5 daughters and I'm only sharing cMs in the range of half cousins with the grandchildren of these daughters who have taken dna tests.

I also don't match Howard's wife but I match both of his parents (I have 25+ matches with both sets of his grandparents.)

Let's call his parents the Donalds and the Bennetts.

Here is the hard part though. I match Howard 2x through my 5th great grandfather Bennett.

So starting from 5x great grandfather Bennett, he had a daughter who moved to Kentucky and married into the Johnson family. Her sister married into the Donald family in Pennsylvania.

Several generations later Howard Donald (Bennett) from Pennsylvania traveled to Kentucky and hooked up with a Johnson (Bennett) cousin. Who knows if he knew he was sleeping with a cousin.

So you can see how I'm descending from the Bennetts twice - once through the Kentucky Bennett/Johnsons and once again through the Pennsylvania Bennett/Donalds.

The most likely scenario according to 2 out 3 genealogists I've had over the last five months is this:

Howard's family owned mines and he often traveled to Kentucky for business.

Howard must have fathered a child outside of his marriage with a woman from the Johnson/Bennett lines from rural Kentucky around 1925 and that child, had my biological father who was probably born around 1945 and was a peer of my biological mother (she won't tell us anything because she is worried about her reputation.)*

I'm probably too inbred on my paternal side to untangle this, but I'll continue here.

My 2nd great grandparents - one who is a Johnsons/Bennett (from Kentucky), have 10 children.

This has proven to be overwhelming in narrowing down to a Johnson/Bennett great grandparent. Because there are no strong dna matches with any other paternal family, it's too difficult to identify a 4th grandparent or their parents.

Every paternal match has the same surnames in their trees.

I'm looking for the right great grand parent out of 10 possibilities to get to a paternal grandmother. I've tested 3 so far, 1 potential great grandmother I matched but her children are half matches (I don't match her husband until you go back to his 2nd set of great grandparents. Yes, do match him too but the matches are weak compared to her parents. I have 7 possibilities to go.

(I guess there weren't many options when your families were the first to settle new territory).

Does anyone have experience with this kind of scenario?

The closest Bennett/Johnson match I have through Ancestry.com, is one I share 110cM with. They are adopted and he is feeling overwhelmed right now because he has discovered 2 brothers and he's shocked that he is a descendant of some famous US founding fathers.

I have thousands of 4th - 6th cousins, which is too far out for me.

The only thing I haven't done is a test through 23 and me. I have been hesitant because I'm confused about this company "owning" your dna . GEDMAtch is not helping.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! On the plus side, I've discovered that I am descending from the Adams, the Washingtons and supposedly the Franklins (Benjamin Franklin's daughter - albeit, illegitimatey). That is a whole different story! Most distant cousin want to help but some are gatekeeping info because they don't want to acknowledge that some ancestor cheated.

This is probably hopeless, but thank you to everyone who read this all the way through.

• We think that my biological mother must have hooked up with a distant cousin of the man she married, when they went to the wedding reception of her husband's cousin in Kentucky at exactly the time I was conceived (1 week before Thanksgiving 1964).

The Bennett Johnson lines that I match all go back to the same place in Kentucky as does the man on my birth certificate and his family. There is 1 common 5th great grandparent between birth certificate dad, the Bennetts and the Johnsons. I'm matching all of them - hundreds of matches ranging from 9 to 116 cMs.