A woman who was falsely told her baby died at birth has reunited with her daughter for the first time in 69 years.
Photo / Fox
A woman who was falsely told her baby died at birth has reunited with her daughter for the first time in 69 years.
Photo / Fox
A woman who was falsely told her baby died at birth has reunited with her daughter for the first time in 69 years.
In 1949, at 18, Genevieve Purinton gave birth to baby girl Connie Moultroup, but was told her daughter died at birth.
"I said I wanted to see the baby. They told me she died," Purinton recalled on Monday in an interview with Fox 13.
But 69 years later and in what is being described as a Christmas miracle, the 88-year-old and her daughter came together for the first time hugging and crying during their emotional reunion.
A woman who was falsely told her baby died at birth has reunited with her daughter for the first time in 69 years.
Photo / Fox
"It's been a lifetime of wanting this," said Moultroup, who arrived here from her home in Vermont. "I remember being 5 years old, wishing I could find my mother."
Moultroup had spent many years trying to identify who her real mother was, and made a small breakthrough discovering she had a first cousin whose mother was named Genevieve Purinton.
When Purinton gave birth to her daughter in an Indiana hospital, she was told a life-altering lie.
"I was a young, unwed mum, and they said my baby died during birth," Purinton tells Yahoo Lifestyle. She wasn't provided with a death certificate and she never had more children.
But last year Moultroup's daughter bought her a DNA kit in the hope she'd one day track her mother down.
"I never met my own biological father, and growing up, it was just me and my mom," Moultroup's daughter Bonnie told Yahoo Lifestyle.
"I remember mum trying to find her birth mother, and it was hard to see her go through that."
On September 8, Moultroup received a phone call that would change her life forever.
It was her long-lost biological mum, Purinton.
After she was falsely told her baby had died in childbirth, Florida resident Genevieve Purinton, 88, met her 69-year-old daughter, Connie Moultroup, for the first time.
"She said, 'Where were you born? What year? I think I might be your mother."
After bi-weekly phone calls to one another, the pair decided it was time to meet for the first time.
Embracing one another, Purinton said: "You're really not dead", with Moultroup responding "I'm not dead".
Following a lengthy hug, Moultroup joked: "She couldn't deny me if she wanted to — we look exactly alike.
"We have the same facial features, bad knees, and we've both had heart attacks and strokes."
