LAS CRUCES - In the fall of 2017, Loraine Gaines of Alaska made a trip through southern New Mexico, hoping to find a lead that might solve a decades-long mystery: What happened to her mother's first baby, born in 1933 in Silver City amid the Great Depression?

Gaines visited with a Sun-News reporter in-person, and her sister, Glenda Poling of Oregon, talked with him by phone to relay a bizarre and painful family tale involving:

their paternal grandmother , who was known to have had run-ins with the law revolving around "acquiring" children;

, who was known to have had run-ins with the law revolving around "acquiring" children; their mother , Annie Louise Holt Fulstone, who'd been in her 20s when she gave birth to her first baby;

, Annie Louise Holt Fulstone, who'd been in her 20s when she gave birth to her first baby; and the missing sibling, whom the sisters believed had survived childbirth, contrary to an earlier family belief the baby had died soon after delivery.

And now, Gaines and Poling say they're happy to report — thanks to a coincidental link made through a DNA testing service — they believe they've solved the long-standing family mystery, identifying the missing child.

More:Sisters search for long-lost sibling born in Silver City

"We did find our baby; it was not a boy it was a girl," Gaines said. "She did not die (at birth)."

Unfortunately, the woman who they believe to be their missing sibling did die in 1997 after spending much of her life in Las Vegas, Nevada. But Gaines and Poling said solving their decades-long mystery is a relief in itself. They've connected with the family members of their late sister — including her husband, whom Poling and Gaines feel privileged to have spoken with just before he died in January.

"It's remarkable — the magic of DNA — and we're all happy," Poling said. "We still feel like we're walking on cloud nine."

In 1978, Poling began to suspect her oldest sibling may not have died just after birth, as the family believed. Her mother recounted the baby was taken away by her mother-in-law in a hat box soon after being born. But her mother had few other details. Then, before their mother died in 1995, she divulged slightly more information: The baby had been buried in Silver City.

After their mother's death, the sisters discovered in her belongings conflicting information pertaining to their sibling. The baby's birth certificate indicated that the child was born alive. But it was filled out about seven months after the baby's death certificate had been issued. Gaines and Poling considered this a breakthrough, saying their grandmother was known for falsifying documents.

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Gaines, Poling and another of their sisters, Betty, who has since died, launched into a full-scale search for information after their mother's death.

The siblings at one point explored the possibility that their sibling could have been the well-known "Hatbox Baby," an infant found abandoned in the Arizona desert in 1931.

It was sometime in 2016 or 2017, as Poling recalls, that she'd been in touch with an Arizona Republic editor over the possibility that her mystery sibling could have been that state's "Hatbox Baby." She and Gaines did a test with FamilyTreeDNA — one of several companies offering DNA testing for genealogical research — to explore the matter. It turned out there wasn't a match to the mysterious Arizona baby.

"But we couldn't stop searching," said Poling, who also had her DNA tested with Ancestry.com. "We just decided for Betty and for my mom, we're going to keep this up."

In early 2018, Gaines wanted to explore another aspect of her family tree. Her family believed itself to be mostly European in ethnicity. But a story handed down indicated they may have Native American heritage. So, Gaines took a DNA test through the Colorado-based DNA Consultants, because of a focus that company was developing on tribal DNA analysis. That prompted Poling to also get her DNA tested there in 2018.

The sisters did discover they had Native American ancestry in percentages greater than they expected.

Gaines continued to order different types of DNA analysis through the same company. That led to her having her maternal DNA tested via the same company in July 2018. This is a type of test that looks at DNA that's passed down in a direct line from great-grandmother to grandmother to mother to child. When Gaines got the results back, she was stunned. The report indicated another person — whose identity wasn't visible because of privacy restrictions — was a 100 percent match. It meant they had a shared maternal ancestor.

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Gaines immediately contacted DNA Consultants and requested they reach out to her match and ask if that person would want to connect. And sure enough, the person did.

In September of last year, Gaines was traveling to visit her grandchildren when she received a phone call from Wendee Lowe, a dental hygienist from Las Vegas, Nevada — the woman whose maternal DNA she shared. They began trying to unravel how they were related. All the signs began to point to Lowe's mother, Nelda Brown, who'd died in 1997.

"I asked her a couple of questions about her mother, and it just sounded so much for real," Gaines said. "I started to cry."

Gaines and Poling started to become cautiously optimistic they'd found their sibling who'd disappeared as a baby decades earlier, as well as her daughter — their niece.

Years ago, Lowe had launched into her own quest to explore her family's roots by taking a general DNA test through Ancestry.com. However, when her personal connections — the other people in the database whose DNA indicated a familial tie — showed up in the results, many of the surnames weren't familiar. She was perplexed, but she dismissed it as perhaps the test was too general to hone in on her close family members. Ancestry.com requires a subscription to access its genealogical records, and Lowe soon dropped hers.

But, in 2016, Lowe saw a TV show featuring DNA Consultants and its specialization in tribal genetics. It caught her attention because her father, Frank Brown, had Cherokee heritage. So, Lowe took a test with that company. She was soon involved in a genealogical research project exploring Native American roots.

She'd always heard her mother's side of the family was French and was expecting that ethnicity to show up in her test results. Her father's Cherokee heritage was reflected, but there was no French heritage. A researcher involved with DNA Consultants told her: "There's not an ounce of French in you," as Lowe recalls.

More: New DNA connections finally provide answers in the 'Hatbox Baby' mystery

Instead, the researcher encouraged Lowe to get her mitochondrial DNA — the source of the maternal DNA line — tested, as well. He said he suspected some of her Native American lineage was stemming from her mother's family.

So, Lowe followed that up by having her maternal DNA tested. That test showed her mother had Melungeon heritage, a tri-racial group that includes Native American ancestry. Again, France didn't show up as an area of origin.

Lowe chalked it up to another curiosity about her mother's past — one of several she'd stumbled upon over the years.

As far as Lowe was aware, her mother was born in Floydada, Texas — a small town near Lubbock — in March 1938. But the two once visited the town to see some of her mother's cousins. It occurred to Lowe to ask her mom where she'd been born. And her mom responded oddly.

"She looks around and says: 'I was born right there,'" Lowe said. "It was a U.S. Post Office."

Later, after her mother died, Lowe was examining her mother's birth certificate and noticed it didn't have an address, hospital or ZIP code for her place of birth. She concluded her mom likely didn't know where she was born — hence the response when the two had visited Texas. When Lowe contacted Texas officials about it, the response was that the lack of such data on a birth certificate from that era often meant a child was adopted.

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In addition, Lowe said her mother never quite fit in with the family that raised her. Nelda was a sick child, who's health problems plagued her into adulthood. And she felt like she never quite meshed with the rest of her family.

"My mom used to say to me: 'You don't look anything like your family,'" Lowe said. "And I was like: Well, you don't look like any of your family."

When Nelda's father — who Lowe now believes was an adopted father — died, one of his children picked up some keepsake items from him. But the person didn't want to leave any of them with Nelda because "none of this stuff is going to make any sense to you," Lowe recounted.

Much of Nelda's childhood was spent moving across multiple states, Lowe said. She said this frequent moving was precipitated by a visit one day from a man who Lowe believes could have been Nelda's actual father.

Though Nelda likely was born in New Mexico, that was not among the locations the family that raised her ever settled, according to Lowe. At one point, when Nelda was a teen, the family moved from Tennessee to Amarillo, Texas, so Nelda could get treatment for an ailment.

After high school, Nelda married Frank Brown in June 1957. She followed him to college in Lawton, Oklahoma, where he played football. He wound up being drafted into the U.S. Navy and served aboard the Midway Aircraft Carrier. Post discharge, he got a job at the Nevada Test Site, and the couple moved to Las Vegas in 1961.

Two years later, Lowe was born.

Nelda was a stay-at-home mom, and became involved in patient advocacy. She'd had an experimental surgery in the mid-1950s requiring an ostomy. After moving to Las Vegas, she'd had two more surgeries. She helped found a nonprofit that worked to educate patients, doctors and nurses about ostomy.

"She wanted to bring that to light so people would have a better quality of life," Lowe said.

Her mother died in January 1997 from lung-related problems. She'd smoked for several decades and suffered from emphysema. The last couple years of her life, Nelda was in and out of the hospital. During one particular visit, Lowe recalls her saying: "Do you know who my real father is?"

Confused, Lowe responded: "Grandad?"

"No, no, no, no, my real father," Nelda replied.

Lowe dropped the topic at the time. But looking back, "I think she was just thinking out loud."

Nelda is buried in Las Vegas.

In September 2018, when Lowe called Gaines after fielding the request via the DNA testing company, it wasn't immediately clear to Lowe how the two could be related.

Gaines launched into the lengthy story about how she and her sister believed their oldest sibling had gone missing at birth — and may have survived.

"All of a sudden, a light bulb went off," Lowe said. "You think my mom is that baby. And I went: 'That makes sense because there were so many things that didn't make sense in my mother's life — things she said to me.'"

Poling and Gaines examined their family tree to find any other possibilities for a connection. They couldn't find one. But they were hoping to find out if Lowe also shared a DNA connection to their father.

For Christmas last year, Lowe's husband gifted her with a subscription to Ancestry.com. Poling gave Lowe a call and the two navigated the website together, looking for connections to Poling and Gaines father. Sure enough, his family names came up. It made sense to Lowe why her first foray into Ancestry.com had flopped. She'd been looking for her mother's adopted family's names — not the names of her mom's biological parents.

"All of a sudden, the names on there made sense because they were my mother's family," she said.

Gaines and Poling are confident they've located their missing sibling. It might never be possible to find out whether Nelda was adopted out — or whether she was stolen and sold. It was the Great Depression; poverty was rife, and sometimes people resorted to extreme measures.

"My biggest trepidation was that I was going to find out my parents' baby was sold," Poling said. "There's no shame in finding a better home for your child if you can't afford to raise it. But, if our grandmother, who participated in the delivery of that baby, put it in a pretty hat box and took it away and sold it, that's shameful."

Ideally, Poling and Gaines would like a paper trail to trace their connection to Nelda. But the paper trail, as they've learned in their decades-long search, "is only as good as the people that write it," Poling said.

Along with the joy that comes with believing they've found a their missing sibling, they acknowledge there are other emotions, too.

"I'm just so, so sorry we didn't find the baby before my mother died," Gaines said.

Questions remain about how much involvement people like Poling and Gaines' father and grandparents had in their sister's disappearance.

Poling said she's less angry about the situation now than she once was. Both sisters agree they're happy Nelda was adopted by a family that cared for her and had the means to address her difficult medical needs.

"It has been a long, difficult journey," Poling said. "I feel very much relief. Certainly, I wish the situation had been different. In another way, I feel completely satisfied, and I am extremely happy we have the answer — we have the answer not just for ourselves but for our mother, as well."

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Asked if she wishes this revelation had happened before her mom died, Lowe didn't hesitate to say "yes." She suspects some of her mother's adopted family knew. But Lowe also accepts the past can't be changed. She's focusing on the future.

"I want to get to know everything about my mom's family — about her parents, about her story, about her biological mom," she said. "I feel I've got so much to learn. It's going to be good. I look at pictures, and I'm like 'Oh, my gosh. I look like them.'"

Gaines and Poling called to talk with Lowe's father, Frank, one day in January. They said they had an enjoyable conversation speaking with their sister's widower. He was in poor health and died a day later on Jan. 11. Both Gaines and Poling said Frank was happy to learn his daughter had found more family before he died. He wouldn't worry about her being alone.

Within days, the sisters both flew to Las Vegas to help comfort their niece. They stayed several days before returning home.

Poling and Gaines are planning a big get-together with Lowe in September at another sister's home in Utah. Their brother and other family also expect to attend.

For Gaines, getting beyond a painful and traumatic family history entails focusing on healing and the silver lining. She encouraged anyone who might have a missing family member to not give up hope.

"For every bad thing that happens, something good will come," Gaines said. "We have to look at the good. After finding her (Nelda), we have a niece who needed us. And now we have to rejoice in having her. We righted that wrong. If this is something our people needed in the after-world, we've done it. And we treasure this girl with open arms."

Diana Alba Soular may be reached at 575-541-5443, dalba@lcsun-news.com or @AlbaSoular on Twitter.