A Chicago woman who set out to learn more about her ancestry had no idea a long-hidden family secret would be uncovered.
The bombshell: the man who raised her was in fact not her father.
Cherise Irving grew up on the city’s South Side.
Her parents separated when she was born, but she continued to have a solid relationship with her father.
“My dad was Reginald Irving,” she said. “He was my dad till the end to the end, until he passed,” Cherise said. “I get emotional cause I loved him so much.”
Some years ago, Cherise started working on her family tree. That included an account on Ancestry.com.
She hadn’t been on it for a while.
Then, her daughter logged in on March 14 and made a shocking discovery.
“I started clicking around. Then I saw a match, and it was a face of a man and a name that I had never seen before. And the picture, the face I saw looked like my mom’s. I was like, maybe something has gone wrong,” said Cherise’s daughter, Barbie Chapman. “Sure enough, after, like, really looking at that picture, I saw a face that looked like my mom’s. It took the wind out of me. It felt like a movie. I called my mom, and I’m like, ‘Mom, are you sitting down?'”
It was news Cherise had never expected.
“She found that I was a match to a father. And that was, that was really hard to find out that information. I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Learning your dad is not being your dad. I never expected that, that’s for sure. Yes, it was, it was quite devastating. I was on a serious emotional rollercoaster that is for sure.”
Cherise’s mother died in 2017, never telling her anything about her biological father: Rev. William Chicago Higgins.
“I sent him a message on Ancestry.com. Maybe about two weeks later, and I was sitting at Starbucks when I received a call, and he was like, the first thing he said to me is, ‘God has a plan. Let’s unpack this,'” she stated. “So we later had the paternity test done and found out that, yes, we are a match. So now, after that day, he was like, you can call me dad. He was born and raised here. He moved to Arizona in 2000, and he is still there.”
Cherise and her father now talk every day on the phone. Higgins will be flying to Chicago next week on July 24. He will meet his daughter and grandchildren for the very first time.
“We’re both very happy,” Cherise said. “It’s like a miracle. It really is. And especially me being 63 and he’s 89.”
“I feel so happy to know my grandfather and to have a relationship with him,” said Zachary Watson, Cherise’s son. “He’s a very kind man, and I’m just glad my grandpa has been talking to my mom and they have a relationship.”
“I have a new grandfather, which I’m excited about because the ancestry tree reaches that far back as well. So it’s been really exciting to see the pieces come together,” Barbie said.