EDITOR’S NOTE: In this article, the Cobbs Creek resident tells the extraordinary story of her husband’s great discovery and how DNA tests united brothers who grew up never knowing each other.
This is a story of a young girl and the events in her young life that changed so much for so many.
Rosamond Riggins lived with her mother Ethel in Norfolk, a divorced working mom. Rosamond and her brother George were latchkey kids, sometimes without adult supervision. In 1930, Ethel’s 63-year-old father from Baltimore was staying with them looking for a job.
While Ethel worked, her father was home with the children. One afternoon he took advantage of his then 14-year-old granddaughter, Rosamond. The details are sketchy, but she became pregnant. The story goes that she went to an unwed mothers’ home until the baby, a boy, was born on Dec. 31, 1931. After her son was born, they returned home and from there the baby was given away. No record of the birth or birth certificate was ever filed. Rosamond ...