Usually, people get DNA tests to find the answers to things they don’t know. For Jordan Adlard Rogers, the goal was to confirm something he was pretty sure he did know — who his real father was. When Jordan finally got his answer, it changed his life in ways that the rest of us can only imagine.
Until recently, Jordan worked as a personal care worker Britain.
His life was pretty much how you would imagine it for someone in that situation, with a baby on the way — paycheck-to-paycheck. However, things were about to get better, and it was thanks to persistence rather than luck — persistence and a DNA test.
From the time he was 8, Jordan suspected that his father was Charles Rogers, an aristocrat from Cornwall.
“He offered to do a DNA test when I was younger but it didn’t happen and then when I was 18 I knocked on his door and asked if I could have the test and he told me to do it through the solicitors,” Jordan told Cornwall Live . “I was 18 so I had other priorities at the time.”
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Jordan kept trying, off and on, for many years.
“I wrote more letters in my twenties but never got a reply,” he said, “then three years ago I got in contact with power of attorney Philip Care. Philip said Charles didn’t want to do the test so I wrote one final letter with a DNA test kit enclosed and that was when Philip rang and told me Charles was dead.”
Charles’s passing finally allowed the DNA test to go through, and it revealed that Jordan was indeed his son.
Now 31, that made Jordan the sole rightful heir to Penrose Estate, a sprawling 1,500-acre property that includes a stately manor house that dates back to the 17th century. It’s a property valued at an estimated £50 million (about $63.5 million U.S.). Much of the estate is now in the care of the National Trust, as a gift from the Rogers family in 1974 in exchange for a 1,000-year lease to keep living there.
So, Jordan doesn’t have to go into work anymore.
The Rogers family trust includes stocks and investments, as well as rents, which will provide him an annual income of about £52,000 (about $66,000 U.S.). That’s not exactly easy-street, of course, and Jordan has his father as a reminder of that as well.
Jordan has been piecing together his father’s story since taking over the manor.
It turns out that Charles never actually lived in the estate and never inherited it himself. “He lived in one of the estate’s farmhouses as his mum lived here so he never got the chance to inherit it,” Jordan explained. “They died two weeks apart and his brother was also in line to live in the estate before him.”
Charles had quite a sad life, in fact.
“There was always a pressure of him trying to match expectation,” Jordan said. “His brother was a RAF pilot and his dad a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, so he had big shoes to fill. He was under huge pressure taking it on, but he was different and a free spirit.”
Charles was greatly affected by his own stint in the army and by his brother’s death from cancer, and turned to drug use. When he died, he was living out of his car on the estate, and that’s where he was found, having overdosed.
Not forgetting where he’s come from, Jordan says that he plans to give back to the community.
“People say I’m lucky but I would trade anything to go back and for Charles to know I was his son,” he said. “Maybe then he might have taken a different path.
“I don’t need to work anymore so I want to set up a charity and help the Porthleven and Helston communities,” he said.
h/t Cornwall Live