Genealogy and Adoption
Disclaimer: Nothing in this article should be construed or interpreted as legal advice.
I have been teaching Genealogy off and on for over three decades. One of the things that happens in every class I teach, is that there is at least one person who was adopted, who wants to know how to go about finding their birth parents. While my answers haven’t changed much in thirty years, the resources for both the adoptees and the birth parents have increased greatly, as has the civil understanding as to why adoption records should be made available to those searching. I have a lot to say about this issue so please forgive the length of this article.
Writing a Genealogy Letter
For those of you who have been around the hobby since before the internet, this topic will be nothing new to you. Back in the day, it was the one major way to gather information and it took the patience of Job sometimes to get an answer from a key person. Letter writing seems to be a lost art today, but it is still a useful Genealogical Tool. It helps you make contact with more current generations whose records you can’t find on the Internet or from some other source. It also gives a far more personal touch to research that is often spent in libraries or sitting at a computer screen. Here’s how I approach the Genealogical Letter when I need to use it as a method.
Obituaries
Obituaries are heavily used as a source for Genealogy Research. The logic of their use is that they often list a lot of information about an individual, their parents, their brothers and sisters, their children, their grandchildren, et……Plus obituaries can tell some of the person’s life history and activities.
Two problems come from using obituaries in your research. The first problem is the accuracy of the obituary, and the second comes from the use of the obituary itself, and whether or not it is Public Information or Copyrighted information.
Hopefully I can enlighten you to these issues and their answers.
Keep Traditions Alive!
Last weekend we spent the better part of two days hauling out all the Christmas Boxes and setting about the home placing all the Christmassy things here and there. The 6 foot plastic tree, because I am allergic to Pine, the boxes of ornaments and under the tree items. The Manger my father made decades ago out of spare wood, and the various under the tree characters. Under our tree looks like Bethlehem was invaded by rejects from the North Pole and Dickens “A Christmas Carol”. About the only thing missing is the train and that’s because there’s little room to do it right and besides the transformer burnt out a few years ago and I just haven’t replaced it.
Pass the Turkey
How many of you fight over the Drumstick? We never solved that problem in our house and the kids and some of the adults grabbed for only two available and the resulting spectacle was a sight to behold. But in the days of Atomic Testing and the Cold War, nothing seemed that strange and no one ever used the logic of buying a box of drums and leaving the rest of the bird at the store.
Twenty five or more people all crowded around an Adult Table and a Kids Table, all doing their best to grab everything in sight. Passing dishes in two different directions, so the poor suckers in the middle always got stuck with a pile up of dishes and no place to put them.
Add Some Cheese
Pictures are a large part of Genealogy Research. One of the first things I inherited from my grandfather’s estate was a box of pictures. I spent years trying to find out who the people were and even with asking some of my older relatives, I got a lot of shoulder shrugs and I dunno’s. I was able to identify some of the pictures, but many lay sadly in a box, waiting for their names to be restored.
So, here are a few thought for you when dealing with your pictures, whether Genealogy based or not.
Writing “Roots”
In 1976, a couple years after I got started in Genealogy, Alex Haley wrote a book called “Roots.” Soon this book was turned into the first Mini-Series on television. For a week in 1977, millions of viewers glued themselves to their televisions and a bowl of popcorn and watched this slave saga unfold from the jungles of Africa to the plantations of Virginia.
It was a smash hit! It spawned a sequel, it made Alex Haley famous overnight!
And it was all based on a flawed Genealogy, poor research techniques and plagiarism.
It was fiction.
Genealogy Software
If you are working on your genealogy, you need a piece of software to record everything you find. I have some strong feelings when it comes to software because that was my profession for over a decade. I have designed, tested, sold and installed software and taught people how to use it. So when I talk about things in that arena, it comes from some very specific ideas and experience.
Here is some historical perspective and a bit of information different than the reviews you will find on most Software sites. I have dealt with many of the developers first hand over the years and know there many motivations. I have also seen many companies destroyed by tactics that reek.
The Big Promise
One of the things you will be sure to encounter once you have been researching long enough is what I refer to as “The Big Promise.” You will find someone, somewhere who will have documents, pictures, newspaper clippings, journals, military records or something else that it would be really great for you to have for your research. While many people might hand you these things you will always encounter the person who looks you squarely in the eye and says, “You can have these things when I die.”
Don’t hold your breath!
Catchem BEFORE They Croak
Old people are a great resource for the Genealogist. Simply by having lived long, they have accumulated a set of life experiences, that can greatly aid you in your research. They can give you context to go with the documents you may have discovered. They can also help you timeline things and also help you pinpoint geographically, when and where the family events may have happened.
In a nutshell, they give you a human perspective to the research that can add a lot of color to what you have learned. But, in order to obtain this information, you have to Catchem BEFORE They Croak. Here’s a series of methods that I have used to facilitate gathering this information.
