After Decades, Man Left On Doorstep As A Baby Reunites With Long-Lost Family

Jan 12, 2023 by apost team

A 90-year-old man from Pittsburgh wrote a Christmas wish in 2016, stating that he wanted to find and reconnect with his birth family. Jim Scott from Lafayette Hill has been trying to look for the blood relatives he never knew because he was left on a doorstep as a 12-day-old baby in 1932. 

Scott's eldest child, Maryland Haig, has been helping him trace his roots since she found out about her father's wish. So, they took DNA tests and submitted his profile on Ancestry.com, the largest genealogy company in the world, which has access to billions of historical records and DNA kits. Through the website, Haig also found news clippings of her father from April 1932. Those were his only documents or records at birth. 

Scott was not even aware that he was the adopted child of twice-widowed Walter Scott until 1953. In an interview Tribune-Review, he recalled seeing the proof of his adoption on his birth certificate when he applied to join the Naval Air Cadets at 21 years old.

"I had never seen my birth certificate. When I looked at it, under parents, it said: 'Unknown.' That's when I learned about everything."

After learning the truth, Scott, the only child of his adoptive father, said that he did not get upset with him because he had a great childhood. 

"I was very, very well cared for, never abused, never neglected, always cared for."

However, since knowing his past, Scott spent the rest of his adult life looking for answers about his long-lost family.

He was named James Edward Broad by two policemen, James Walker and Edward Hays, who found him inside a basket on a doorstep on Broad Street. Haig presumed that her father's real parents were struggling to raise a family, so they left him in a good part of Pittsburgh in the hopes that someone would take him in. He was adopted at two years old. 

All the pieces came together after Haig asked a stranger on Ancestry.com if he was willing to submit to a DNA test as well. The man was Bob Laubham, a barber nine years younger than Scott, who turned out to be his half-brother. 

The siblings then started communicating, exchanging photos and facets of their lives. Laubham was the oldest of six siblings and was dumbfounded about having an older brother. He said their father never talked about it. 

Haig also discovered a few of his father's cousins online, and they have exchanged Facebook chats as well. Then in May 2022, Haig found another significant match. Felix Zabroski, 86, and Scott shared the same mother. 

​​ "To be truthful with you, I already had seven siblings and there's no way in the world I thought I had another one out there."

Zabroski, a former school teacher, has seven other siblings, and they threw a party for Scott and his daughters in the fall of 2022.  

Scott also learned he has 14 siblings, but only eight are living. Speaking with Fox 29 Philadephia after meeting a couple of brothers and a sister, Scott said there was no feeling of estrangement at all. It was as if he had known his siblings forever.

The families planned a get-together for January 2023. Suffice it to say, Scott, in his old age, still strongly believes in wishes coming true.

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