Uncover Adoption Secrets with Genealogy Research Methods

Could genealogy help adult adoptees search for their birth parents? Genealogists who usually begin their search with grandparents or great grandparents and adult adoptees who usually don’t have knowledge of their birth parents, generally employ the same set of strategies to uncover their heritage.

Bing.com stock image

How many adoptees are there in the US? According to the website, 

http://www.adoption.org/adopt/adoption-facts.php:

 “In the last decade (since the year 2000), the U.S. Census has attempted to collect national demographics on the adoption community. The data have helped the government estimate that there are over 7 million adult adoptees in America and 1.5 child adoptees.” 

Of the approximately 7 million adult adoptees alive today in America, many are searching for their birth parents:

“Between two and four percent of all adoptees searched in the year 1990.” (American Adoption Congress, 1996)  

But there is another interesting statistic:

Bing.com stock images

“The psychological literature has established that the desire of 60 to 90 percent of adoptees wanting to obtain identifying information regarding their biological parents is a normative aspect of being adopted.” (American AdoptionCongress, 1996) 

If 60 to 90 percent have the desire to learn about their birth roots, why are only 2 to 4 percent actively searching? What holds adoptees back from searching for their birth parents? Many people may consider a search for many years without taking a step because of many obstacles, such as fear of failure, not knowing where to start, or any number of other reasons. But once a person decides to start a search, some help from genealogical research methods might come in handy.

Richard Hill, an adult adoptee who didn’t find out that he was adopted until he graduated from high school, shared his story of how he conducted his successful search for his birth parents in a book, Finding Family.

Used by permission of author

His experience can be enjoyed on one level as a riveting detective story with ups and downs, twists and turns, lucky breaks and disappointing dead ends. 

On another level, Finding Family is a road map of how to use many different kinds of sources that genealogists regularly employ to find ancestors. Richard started with the step that many genealogist gurus suggest that you begin with – interviewing family members and family friends. Ann Fleming Carter  explains more about how to approach the person you wish to interview, how to build rapport, and what questions to ask in Chapter 1 “Where Do I Start?” of her book The Organized Family Historian. 

While Richard digested and analyzed the information he collected from his interviews, he also began checking vital records, an often difficult and frustrating experience for adoptees. A search for vital records brings a researcher into contact with the keepers of such records, and these are often courts and health departments (Fleming provides a website, http://www.vitalrec.com/ in her book, which lists where to find vital records by state.) Richard wrote to the Ingram County, Michigan Probate Court to

Photograph by Tim Hollosy,Ingham County Courthouse in

 Mason, Michigan, USA. December, 2006,Wikimedia.

request his non-identifying information. In Michigan, the probate court in each county holds the sealed adoption records for that county. This initiated a long relationship with the Probate Court that you will see described in the book.

Bing.com stock images

He also wrote to the state health department to see if there might be some kind of birth record on file. As his search progressed and he found out more details, Richard was to repeat this request several times with different results! While many genealogists find challenges in searching for birth records from more than 75 years ago, adoptees can have trouble getting their own birth record!
And it’s not that the courthouse burned or that birth records weren’t required by the state at the time they are searching.

After finding out where his mother went to high school from one of her friends whom Richard had tracked down, he consulted old high school yearbooks for possible photos of his mother.

Bing.com stock images

When he found out some places where she had worked, he searched for former co-workers to interview and newspaper articles about the target businesses. He employed a tactic that was new to me; he wrote to the Social Security Administration

US Social Security Blding: AgnosticPreachersKid,15 September 2008,

 Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, 330 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, D.C. A.K.A. the Social Security Administration Building, Wikimedia.

to request an earnings report for his mother for his target year and received a list of places where she had worked during a critical year of his search!

Richard talked about his search and mentioned some of the problems that plague many genealogists – the difficulty of staying motivated, the way day-to-day life gets in the way, and how some person will come along or some event will happen that gets you right back in the game! A critical step in Richard’s search was making contact with affinity groups in the area he was researching.

Bing.com stock image

It was through these groups that he found experts in this field. Just as genealogists sometimes find that networking with like-minded people or working with a professional can move their search forward, so did Richard.

First, someone recommended the Adoption Identity Movement (AIM) where adoptees who were searching could get together and share stories, strategies, and contacts. A person he met in an AIM meeting led him to Adoptees Search for Knowledge (ASK), a search group in Lansing, MI where Richard was born. It was at an ASK meeting that Richard found a person who would be key in helping him reach his goal.

Another record source, very familiar to genealogists, that Richard used was the newspaper. But he went beyond searching for obituaries in the library. He put an ad in some small, local newspapers

Bing.com stock image

that served communities near where his birth mother had lived and worked. Since Richard had found out, first in a general way from his father and then the specific details from his other family member and his mother’s friends, that his birth mother had died in an accident, he used this information to create the newspaper ad. And he received responses!

As a retired scientist, Richard knew the value of keeping copious notes of his search process.

Bing.com stock image

This helped him immensely when life put his search on the back burner several times over the decades of his journey to identify his birth parents:

“…I kept careful notes of my research, phone calls and meetings, plus copies of all correspondence.” (p. 70)

Each time Richard re-started his search after a long hiatus, he would review his notes, which brought him up-to-date. Also, when he uncovered people with new information, he could use his notes to see how these new pieces would fit with his existing knowledge.

Although Richard demonstrated persistence, patience and putting-in-the time in his search, he might have never discovered the identity of his father without the help of DNA testing.

Bing.com stock image

Richard’s story clearly demonstrates how DNA testing works hand-in-glove with traditional research methods to help untangle ancestry questions. That said, Richard’s experience also tells us that we can’t rely on DNA testing alone. It was through a combination of traditional research, the yDNA test and the autosomal DNA test that Richard successfully identified his father.

Adult adoptees searching for their birth parents use many of the same strategies that genealogists do in their search for ancestors. In fact, this type of search could be a gateway for adoptees to turn thinking about searching to taking the first steps.

Bing.com stock image

 Both adoptees and non-adoptees begin exploring family history because they want to know the people who came before them. Whether you are searching for parents or ancestors further back, you will be using many of the same research methods to find official records of many kinds, living people who might be able to provide information, books, and other types of source material. Kimberly Powell  in her online article, “Adoption Search: How to Find Your Birth Family”, presents a good introduction to searching.

Bibliography

1. Richard Hill, Finding Family (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Privately printed, 2012).
2. Ann Carter Fleming, The Organized Family Historian (Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 2004). 

Drama in American Colonial Courts

We have all seen the advice in the how-to-do genealogy books that we not forget court records in our research into our ancestors’ lives.

Court House, Boston, built 1713 (engraving 1751 by Nathaniel Hurd; courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Wikimedia, public domain.

One of the standard works on this subject that I find very clear and informative is Courthouse Research for Family Historians by Christine Rose.

In order to fully appreciate the importance of court records for genealogical research, we need to understand the significance of law and the courts in the daily lives of the colonists in early America. Browsing through the new books at my neighborhood library, I came across The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle by Ava Chamberlain, a scholarly study of how historians have mischaracterized Elizabeth Tuttle, the paternal grandmother of the great Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards.

Used by permission of author

 Although Professor Chamberlain wrote this book to uncover the true character of Elizabeth Tuttle, she also gives genealogists a great lesson in how to use court records to study ancestors.

In addition to modeling the use of civil and criminal court records to glean information about people who often didn’t leave other records, Chamberlain also demonstrates another genealogical lesson: “Because Elizabeth Tuttle’s story cannot be told directly, we must adopt an indirect approach.”¹ This means using the records of collateral persons and families, the written trail of those people close to Elizabeth whose actions can give us a glimpse into her life.  I love Professor Chamberlain’s turn of phrase to describe how she will tell the story of Elizabeth Tuttle’s divorce by “teasing it out from the historical records.” ² 

Why are court records so important a resource in studying colonial era ancestors?

In seventeenth century colonial America, the courts played a large part in people’s lives, according to Chamberlain:

“Most colonists, both male and female, appeared in court at various moments of their lives….”³ 

Chamberlain footnoted the above quote which led me to another study of the role of the court in colonial times: Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut  by Bruce H. Mann, Professor of Law at Harvard. Checking notes and bibliographies in the books we consult as genealogists is another very important part of research which can lead to information we might never have discovered otherwise.

Used by permission of author

Mann tells us that the main reason people went to court in colonial times was to settle debts. As we are aware today, when people go to court, they often come away with bad feelings about each other. In colonial times, society was quite different from today; it was much more insular so the disharmony caused by law suits was more of a threat to the community than it is today.

In order to understand the role of the court in the seventeenth century, Mann reminds us that we need to remember an important aspect of colonial society. People lived in very small communities, generally of about 100 families. The insularity that resulted from small groups living together resulted in people interacting with each other in many different ways, having “multilayered relationships”:

“Debtors and creditors did not, indeed could not, limit their relations to single transactions. They might also be neighbors, relatives, fellow church members, companions in the local militia company, suppliers of goods and services that each needed, rivals for the affection of the same widow, parents whose children had quarreled or whose livestock had eaten each other’s grain. In short, they were people whose course of dealing with one another stretched across time as well as across several roles.” ⁴ 

As we can see from the description above of the reasons people took each other to court, we have a strong indication of what types of records we might find in courthouse files. The records reflect people’s daily lives and go way beyond the catalog of “facts” that we read in birth, marriage and death records.

What kinds of court records did Chamberlain come across in her effort to reveal Elizabeth Tuttle’s true story? The most telling records were the divorce petitions, and there were several including appeals, that Richard Edwards, Elizabeth’s husband, brought against her. And much earlier in their marriage, Richard had brought a petition of paternity against his new bride.

We have seen that one function of the court in colonial times was to give people a place to air their differences without threatening communal bonds. The judges and the selectmen were the arbiters. But how did early Americans feel about the law?

Used by permission of author

To find more about the role of laws and courts in early America. I did a google search and found a book by Peter Charles Hoffer  entitled Law and People in ColonialAmerica.







Hoffer discusses how the colonists’ attitude toward the law developed and how they used the courts:

“Throughout their colonial and revolutionary experience, Americans developed a passion for law, a legalism that pervaded social, economic, and political relationships. They laid their disputes with one another before the courts of law to an extent exceeding all other peoples. The colonists believed in the possibilities of a lawful world, and their demands for legal redress grew from and sustained this faith.” ⁵

Hoffer underscores again the function of the court as a means of preserving harmony in the small, isolated, frontier communities where everyone depended on one another:

 Pilgrims going to church, published between 1940-1950, Boughton, George Henry, 1834-1905 , artist, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

“Law kept families together with ties of property and obligation. People went to court to reintegrate themselves into towns, parishes, and colonial life. Courts were places of signification. They helped people decide what was important to them.” ⁶ 

The quote above explains clearly why genealogists need to look at court records if they want to build a more complete picture of their early American ancestors’ lives.

Although the law and the court featured largely in the lives of the colonists and served as a means of diffusing friction, it cannot be said that all members of colonial society were treated equally in the court system, as Hoffer makes clear:

“…early American law gave some people and some ways of behaving advantages over others. It forbade certain activities, defining the margins of acceptable deviation from normal or customary conduct. It intruded itself into people’s lives, demanding that they honor commitments, pay debts, serve church and county, and accept pain, shame, and punishment for their crimes. Local magnates, sitting as justices of the peace and on vestries or councils of elders, demanded deference and used law to reinforce their demands. The playing field was by no means level.” ⁷

Colonial kitchen with woman spinning, an engraving, 1885, A Brief History of the United States by Joel Dorman Steele and Esther Baker Steele, 1885, wikimedia, public domain.

This brings us back to Elizabeth Tuttle and why Chamberlain wrote a book about her life. Women, indentured servants, children, slaves and other marginalized people were often treated harshly under the law; they had no voice and so rarely do we hear or even know their side of any story.

 We are fortunate that through Professor Chamberlain’s research, Elizabeth Tuttle’s good name and reputation have been restored.

 

With this new knowledge of the colonial courthouse as a kind of theater where our ancestors played out many significant happenings in their lives, I look forward to looking for records left my Allis ancestors who lived in colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Notes

1. Ava Chamberlain, The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle (New York and London: New York, University Press, 2012), 2.

2. Ibid., 10.

3. Ibid., 50.

4. Bruce H. Mann, Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut (Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 18.

5. Peter Charles Hoffer, Law and People in Colonial America (Baltimore, MD, The John Hopkins University Press, 1998) xii.

6. Ibid., ix.

7. Ibid., ix-x.