Question Home

Position:Home>Genealogy> How can you trace your family tree when you are adopted ?


Question:go to courthouse and pull your birth certificate as your birth parents, at least your mom, has to be listed. where shes from, her age at your birth and race..u can use location at birth and where, ie, which hospital u were in to get from the hospital her billing address at the time go through the hospital chapin then director.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: go to courthouse and pull your birth certificate as your birth parents, at least your mom, has to be listed. where shes from, her age at your birth and race..u can use location at birth and where, ie, which hospital u were in to get from the hospital her billing address at the time go through the hospital chapin then director.

Actually you do this just like everyone else does. Start with yourself, then your parents, then grandparents and work backwards, documenting everything.

Unfortunately, being adopted means that first step - your parents - is a most difficult step to establish. But unless you do so, you really can't go any further.

BUT, if you are successful in identifying one or both of your parents, then (unless they were adopted as well) you are just in classic genealogy research.

But that first step is a doozy for adopted people. There are a number of places and organizations that help people find their biological parents. You will probably need to get their help. Or do a lot of difficult (often legal) legwork yourself.

But once you accomplish that absolutely necessary first step, then after that it is classic genealogical research which will probably be a heck of a lot easier.

There's a difference between your 'Family' and your Genetic Ancestry.
If you are adopted, that family is your heritage now, and so that family tree is as much yours as a natural born child.

As for your Genetic family, ask your parents for the adoption records and start tracing from there. If the records aren't there, contact the adoption agency. If the records are sealed, contact an attorney to see what your state laws are regarding an adoptee's rights and proceed from there. You may have to petition a court to unseal records.

If you can find your biological parents' names and birth dates, you do it like everyone else, except you can't ask your real parents (the ones who feed you, clothe you, teach you by example and love you) to sit down with a cup of tea and spin family stories to flesh out the dry facts of BMD dates and places.

If you can't, you are stuck. Adoption is a constant bone of contention in our little world. One camp argues that genealogy is the study of ancestors and descendants. It is a hobby with some limits. Stamp collectors don't put coins in their stamp albums and bird watchers don't record mammals in their life lists. Another camp says that doesn't matter, if you are the legal child of John and Jane, how you came to them. The dictionary tends to agree with camp #1. Genealogy doesn't come with rules on the box, like Scrabble does.

You can "do" your real parent's lines, with a note on each that they had room in their homes and hearts for a child. You can write an autobiography of what it is like to be adopted.

I wish you well.

It really depends where you're at and the country where you were adopted. We all take for granted that everyone on this board is from the same country. But the reality is that we regularly have people on this board from India, Canada, the UK, Australia, Mexico, the Caribbean and the US. In each of these countries there's a different struggle to find the names and information about birth parents.

If you're in the US and are lucky enough to have been born in Kansas or Alaska, there are no secrets. You can walk in, get the birth records with your biological parents listed, and you go from there. If you're in one of the very restrictive states, there is nothing you can do to break the court seal. You have to work through other channels and hope one or both of your birth parents is also looking for you. In between, there are states like Michigan and Ohio where you can get an intermediary, such as The Friend of the Court, to review your birth records and send word to your birth parents that you're looking for them and see if they're willing to meet you.

Once you have names for your birth parents, you have to start with the information given and work from there. Hopefully you'll get more than the name Jane Smith from Illinois. But you have to work with the information you're allowed access to. It's hard to give more specific advice until we know what you have. I'm a professional genealogist and I often do work for courts to track down lost heirs. From experience, I can tell you that sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's as impossible as finding a Smith in a haystack. It took me 2 months to track down a woman from California who was displaced by one of the fires recently. She relocated to Colorado and didn't even tell her mother where she was. It takes some real creativity to find some of the people in this country. If you're lucky enough to get the help of the Court in locating your birth mom, all the better. But to find out what's available, you need to contact the court in the county where you were adopted to see what services they're willing to offer you.

Source(s):
http://www.worldvitalrecords.com
http://www.ntis.gov/products/pages/ssa-d...

You can always research based on your adopted family. But if you want to do your bloodline you would need to know enough informaiton about your parents to start. It can likely be done. Have you checked out the adoption section on Cyndi's List on the web? She has a set of info just for folks that have been adopted. Its http://www.cyndislist.com