DNA Test Leads Woman Raised White to Probable Black Father

She Took a DNA Test at 64 — and Uncovered a Family Secret Hidden for Decades

Christine Jacobsen expected her ancestry results to confirm her Danish roots. Instead, they revealed West African ancestry, a probable Black biological father and a sensational story about her conception that remains impossible to prove.

Christine Jacobsen believed she already knew what an ancestry test would tell her.

The two people who raised her were white immigrants from Denmark, and Jacobsen had spent most of her life understanding herself as a white woman with predominantly Danish roots.

But when she took an at-home DNA test in 2016 at age 64, the results did not match the family history she expected.

The test estimated that roughly one-quarter of her ancestry came from West Africa, according to accounts Jacobsen later gave to Business Insider and The Wall Street Journal.

The result did more than alter a pie chart on a genealogy website. It revived an explosive allegation Jacobsen had heard as a teenager and pushed her into an investigation of her biological identity.

A secret surfaced during an argument

Jacobsen has said the first warning that her family story might not be complete came decades before consumer DNA testing became widely available.

In 1968, when Jacobsen was a teenager, she became involved in an argument with a man who was having a relationship with her mother. According to Jacobsen’s recollection, the man abruptly told her that she did not know her father was Black.

Jacobsen said her mother reacted as though a promise of secrecy had been broken. Her mother subsequently showed her an old photograph and said the man pictured might be Jacobsen’s biological father—a light-skinned dancer associated with the Bahamas.

The white Danish man who had raised Jacobsen dismissed the suggestion, and the family largely stopped discussing it.

For decades, the allegation remained unresolved.

The DNA match that changed the investigation

Jacobsen’s first DNA test established that her ancestry was not exclusively European, but its initial relative matches were too distant to identify a biological father.

Two years later, she took another test through 23andMe. That service connected her with a Black woman it identified as a likely first cousin.

The two women compared the amount of DNA they shared, reconstructed a family tree and examined the men in the cousin’s family who could have been Jacobsen’s father.

Their investigation pointed to the cousin’s uncle, Paul Keith Meeres.

Meeres was already dead, which meant Jacobsen could not conduct a direct paternity comparison. The identification instead rested on the genetic relationship with his niece and a collection of biographical details that aligned with what Jacobsen remembered her mother saying.

Who was Paul Keith Meeres?

Jacobsen’s research portrayed Meeres as a complicated figure whose life extended far beyond the paternity mystery.

In an essay published by Severance Magazine, Jacobsen identified Meeres as a Black Marine who served during World War II and trained at Montford Point, the segregated camp where the first Black U.S. Marines were trained.

Jacobsen wrote that she obtained military and death records, communicated with relatives who had known Meeres and researched his postwar career as a performer.

She later helped secure posthumous recognition of his service through the Montford Point Marines’ Congressional Gold Medal program.

At the same time, Jacobsen did not present Meeres as an uncomplicated hero. Her research uncovered accounts of unstable relationships, alcohol-related difficulties and children he reportedly did not raise.

That complexity became part of Jacobsen’s attempt to understand a father she had never knowingly met and a paternal family history that had been concealed from her.

Was she conceived at a swingers’ party?

This is the detail that transformed Jacobsen’s personal history into a viral headline—and the detail requiring the most caution.

Jacobsen said her parents participated in swinging during the 1950s and 1960s. She recalled being sent to relatives or neighbors while adults stayed overnight at the family home.

She said she eventually understood that some of the gatherings involved couples exchanging sexual partners. She also described her mother as having a continuing relationship with one of the participants.

According to Business Insider’s account, members of Meeres’ family and a former wife also described him as having multiple relationships and a reputation for participating in swinging during the relevant period.

Those facts make it plausible that Jacobsen’s mother and Meeres encountered each other through the same social circle.

They do not establish that conception occurred during a particular party.

No public account identifies an exact gathering, date, location or eyewitness who could confirm the circumstances. Jacobsen’s parents and Meeres were all deceased by the time the DNA investigation took place.

Why the viral headline is misleading

The most widely circulated version of the story stated that a woman raised as white learned her father was Black and that she “was conceived at a swingers’ party.”

That wording removes an important qualifier.

Business Insider’s original headline said Jacobsen was probably conceived at a swingers’ party. Later versions transformed that probability into certainty.

The altered wording also compresses a complex genealogical investigation into a simple DNA-test reveal. The consumer test did not display the name of Jacobsen’s father. It identified ancestry and relatives, after which Jacobsen and her match conducted family-tree and biographical research.

A discovery about identity, not only paternity

For Jacobsen, the revelation was not limited to learning the probable identity of her biological father.

She had lived for more than six decades as a socially white woman. Discovering substantial West African ancestry and a Black paternal family did not erase the culture in which she had been raised, but it altered how she understood her family history and her position within American racial life.

Jacobsen said the discovery caused her to think more carefully about racism, inequality and the privileges she had experienced while being perceived as white.

She also identified several people believed to be her paternal half-siblings after growing up as an only child.

Jacobsen eventually documented the experience in her memoir, Dancing Around the Truth, describing writing as a way to process the upheaval caused by the discovery.

The bottom line

The central account is credible and supported by several layers of evidence.

Jacobsen’s DNA tests revealed substantial West African ancestry. A close-relative match and family-tree investigation pointed to Paul Keith Meeres as her probable biological father. Details about his ancestry, occupation and location reportedly aligned with information Jacobsen remembered receiving from her mother decades earlier.

The exact circumstances of Jacobsen’s conception are less certain.

Her parents’ reported lifestyle and accounts of Meeres’ relationships support the possibility that they met through a swinging circle. But the assertion that Jacobsen was conceived during a swingers’ party should be described as a theory or probability—not an established fact.