- A chance connection on Facebook led to a man learning he has 5 siblings after believing he was an only child
- The siblings were reunited after they shared photos of their father on Facebook and realised he was the same man
- The 2 brothers and 4 sisters hope there may be even more siblings they don't know about and welcome the chance to extend the family
Randall Vandivier found out that he has five siblings because of a Facebook link. NAIJ.com learned that the 69-year-old man connected with a woman named Marion on the social media platform because she realised that her grandfather and Randall’s uncle had been good friends.
Marion told ABC News that she sent a friend request to Randall because they had the same surname. She said: “The reason I sent a friend request to Randall was because my grandfather and Randall’s uncle Charles Vandivier were good friends and Randall’s surname is Vandivier.”
She was curious about the family that had been close to hers, and they began talking never suspecting that they were related. It was only when they shared photos of their father, Jesse McDonnell Sr, that they realised they were siblings.
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Randall said: “She sent a picture of her father, and I said, ‘Lord have mercy that’s my father!'”
Jesse McDonnell never married Randall’s mother. Instead, he moved across the country and married Marion’s mother. Neither family knew of the existence of the other.
Born only seven months apart, Randall and his brother, Jesse, didn’t know one another existed. “We exchanged pictures [of] when we were just 2 years old, and we looked like twins,” Jesse said of him and Randall.
There was a great deal of excitement when Randall flew out to meet his siblings, four sisters and a brother identified as Jesse. Jesse said: “I was about to jump out of my skin. I just couldn’t wait.”
The family credits Facebook for bringing them together. There’s simply no other way they’d have found each other.
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Randall said: “Everybody in that generation is dead, you know: our father, her mother, my mother. So it was just beautiful to have this and if it weren’t for Facebook, it would have never happened.”
The extended family now wonders if there may be more siblings out there, and said they wouldn’t mind making their family even bigger.
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Source: Gossip.naija.ng