MONTICELLO — “You can't describe the feeling,” said Albert ‘Steve' Brighton, pausing and putting his finger in the air to ask for a moment. “We've been looking for so long. It's just incredible,” he ended with a smile as tears swelled in his eyes.

Just a few weeks ago, Steve and his older brother LeRoy ‘Roy' Brighton finally found their youngest brother, Phillip James Brighton, after searching for nearly 68 years.

“We found him online on Ancestry.com, or should I say, he found us,” said Steve's daughter, Connie Brighton Van Keuren. “When I saw his message, I just couldn't stop crying.”

Years earlier, the Brighton brothers had also found a half-brother and half-sister from their father's side of the family, and it gave them hope that eventually they would find their brother Phillip too. For years, the family often put ads in the newspaper, but were never successful, so they decided in December to try Ancestry online.

“We kind of realized at a certain point that all the ads we were putting out for years were with the name Phillip and that when he got adopted, there was a large chance that his name was probably changed,” explained Connie, “and maybe he didn't know his original name.”

When Phillip wrote to Connie on the ancestry site he explained that his name is Joseph Antoniato, and that he had been given his original birth certificate just before his mother died, only then finding out his birth name of Phillip. He wrote to her thinking that Steve, her father, was his cousin.

“Joseph's wife gave him the Ancestry trial as a gift at the same time we decided to use it and because it works with DNA and not just your name, my father popped up as his potential family member,” Connie said smiling, looking at her dad. “Little did he know, he wasn't his cousin, but his brother!”

Connie went on to explain that she was careful in her words to Joseph when writing him back, as she didn't want to scare him off, so she waited until they were speaking on the phone to finally tell him that Steve was his brother and that he didn't have just one, but two.

“When I told him, he was in a bit of shock and we both started crying,” said Connie laughing. “He couldn't believe he had one brother, let alone two.”

Amazingly enough, Joseph lives just under two hours from the rest of the family in Pennsylvania, and grew up in Long Island.

“The last time we saw Phillip, or Joseph, was 68 years ago in 1949. Our mother Agnes was killed in an automobile accident,” explained Roy. “She always took the bus home from work and I always sat by the window waiting for her to get off the bus. I was standing by the window that day and I saw the whole thing. It was instant death, the car hit her so quick and kept going.”

The boys at that time had been living with their mother and her sister, their Aunt Dot, in Branford, Connecticut. Roy explained that their aunt already had a child and couldn't handle taking on three more boys, so Phillip was taken to be available for adoption.

“At that time, after our mother was killed, they took Phillip and brought him to an adoption agency,” said Roy. “All's I remember were big pillars, big steps and a place that looked like a mansion, and a man that came out and took Phillip.”

Phillip was put up for adoption because he was so young, but Roy and Steve went into a foster home together and ended up being moved from foster home to foster home for a period of nearly two years.

“Back then, a lot of the people that would take you in, in foster care, were doing it just for the money. Sometimes you got abused and you got mistreated,” stated Roy. “Not all of the foster families, but a lot of them, and we experienced a lot of that along the way.”

After being moved around, they were eventually placed in a Catholic orphanage before finally being moved to a foster home in Otisville. Luckily that foster home is where they stayed for the longest period of time and ended up being like a home to them. It was run by two women, a mother and daughter, that Roy and Steve describe as being “like mothers” to them. When one of the women passed away, Roy and Steve were separated but kept in contact with each other, seeing each other when they could throughout high school.

After both brothers went into the service, they began their search for their youngest brother, as they never forgot him all those years after being separated.

“Joseph never searched for them, because he didn't know there was a ‘them,'” explained Connie. He just always thought he was the only one. So when he did the ancestry online, he was simply doing it to find out his heritage, he had no idea it would lead to finding two brothers.”

Now that the three brothers have been reunited, they're spending as much time together as they can, catching up, getting to know one another and exchanging life stories.

“It's funny because all three of them share certain mannerisms although they didn't grow up together,” laughed Connie endearingly. “Even their attitude is similar.”

The three brothers recently celebrated with a large family reunion just outside of Middletown. First and second cousins, new-found cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters came together with a big cake for the three Brighton brothers and t-shirts made by Samantha Knapp that read “Our First Family Reunion, Our Family is now Complete.”