On 19/02/2015 03:21, Anne Scott wrote: > How does one "prove" a set of birth parents in the case of an > adopted child where a new birth certificate was issued? I've > thought of looking for birth registers and newspaper articles. Are > there other resources?
You don't say where or when the adoption took place, so the following may not apply. If you are referring to England & Wales, then formal adoption didn't start before 1927 (IIRC) and the court papers relating to the adoption are closed to all except the birth parents, adoptive parents and the adopted child. There's no correlation between the regular birth indices and the adopted child indices. An adopted child may or may not keep any name given to him or her by his/her birth parent/s. Often a child wouldn't have even known s/he was adopted. Generally speaking the birth registers are not open to the public and information can only be supplied in the form of a birth certificate. If the child was adopted there should be a note on the certificate itself but you'd have to have some prior knowledge of the birth parents. There may be an announcement of a new child within the family which may or may not mention it is by adoption. There wouldn't be any mention of the birth parents, nor an announcement by them to say their baby had been adopted by Mr & Mrs <name>. Prior to 1927, adoption would have usually been an informal arrangement often within the wider family and more akin to modern fostering. If a formal arrangement involving lawyers was made, you'd have to know who the lawyers were and their files may not be extant or have been deposited in the local archive or record office. An illegitimate child may have been registered by a relative other than the birth mother. There'd be no way of proving who the birth mother was, just a strong suspicion such as the claimed mother being highly unlikely or much too old to have given birth. If the adoption you are interested in took place in England/Wales, contact me /off list/ as I have an adoption certificate which I can show you. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Ashcott, Shapwick, Greinton and Clutton, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://support.legacyfamilytree.com Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
