Within the paperwork she found her mother’s signature.

Ms. Purinton said that she recalled having signed papers at the hospital, but that she assumed they were meant to provide a directive in the event that she died or could no longer care for her daughter. “I had no idea what I signed,” she said.

Before being reunited with her daughter, Ms. Purinton thought she was the last surviving member of her immediate family. Her parents and all eight of her siblings had died, and she did not have any children — or so she thought.

Ms. Moultroup’s adoptive parents told her that she had been born to a “friend of a friend.”

When she was younger, they gave her a different explanation, saying they had “walked up and down the aisles of the hospital until they found me and they just had to take me home,” Ms. Moultroup recalled.

Image Ms. Moultroup’s adoptive father. Credit... via Connie Moultroup

Seeing her birth mother in person was almost like looking in a mirror, she said.

“It was so weird to go my whole life with only three blood relatives: my daughter and two grandkids,” Ms. Moultroup said, adding that none of them bore a strong resemblance to her.

But the two women had more in common than just appearance: They both love to cook and crochet. Ms. Moultroup was a nurse for 34 years. Ms. Purinton once dreamed of being a nurse but never attended college.

Ms. Purinton eventually learned that the man who fathered her child was married. She left high school as soon as her pregnancy became visible, she said, and received her high school diploma in the mail the same day her daughter was born.