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Adoption help for finding birth (grand)parents (1 Viewer)

playin4beer

playin4beer

Footballguy
Here's the story..

My mom was adopted and is now agreeing to the idea of finding her biological parents. My siblings and I have been bugging her for years to pursue it but she's never been on board with the idea.

Her adopted parents (my grandparents) are both deceased.  I'm assuming her biological parents are as well.  She knows the mother was 27 when she gave her up and my mom is 65 now, making the biological mom 92 if she's still alive.  My mom is interested in finding out who her parents are now, mostly for medical history.  She's asked me to help her.. As far as I know, the records were sealed, the mother was 27 when she gave her up, but didn't sign off on it until my mom was 9 months old.  Just an odd situation.. first 27 seems a little old to give a baby up for adoption and then, why wait until she's 9 months old?

Any and all information and help is appreciated.. just looking for where to start.  BTW, Michigan is where I'm located.  

 
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Was the adoption private or through an agency? I think the 1st step is to go to that agency to see if the bio mom left permission for your mom to receive "identifying information". If not, I would reach out to the many online adoptee search helpers. Good luck.

 
if it was through the church then the local archdiocese will have those records

was your mom placed in an orphanage prior to adoption? you may be able to find the records that way, too.

 
Any mormons in the family?  Someone might already have done the research - that's where my grandma found out about her birth parents (despite her birth certificate being lost in a church fire).

 
It was a local children's home that handled it.  A google search shows their records are now kept with the local hospital.

A few emails to get a hold of the right person only to find out the records are maintained for 25 years. Anything beyond that has been destroyed.

Not sure if the local courts would have anything on file or not... 

 
playin4beer said:
Tick said:
Any mormons in the family?  Someone might already have done the research - that's where my grandma found out about her birth parents (despite her birth certificate being lost in a church fire).
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Mom was raised Catholic
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I'd call that a big no.  Was the children's home a Catholic one?  The local diocese may have records.  And the local priest may have helpful suggestions on where to look regardless.

 
An alternative to records may be an Ancestry.com DNA test. It can find genetic relatives, if others have taken the test.

My wife did that and found some relatives through a grandfather that knocked up her grandmother before going to war and was never heard from again.

 
Doing more research on the Children's Home... Seems it was founded out of necessity from unwanted pregnancies caused by loggers coming to town to blow their wages...literally.

 
playin4beer said:
Here's the story..

My mom was adopted and is now agreeing to the idea of finding her biological parents. My siblings and I have been bugging her for years to pursue it but she's never been on board with the idea.

Her adopted parents (my grandparents) are both deceased.  I'm assuming her biological parents are as well.  She knows the mother was 27 when she gave her up and my mom is 65 now, making the biological mom 92 if she's still alive.  My mom is interested in finding out who her parents are now, mostly for medical history.  She's asked me to help her.. As far as I know, the records were sealed, the mother was 27 when she gave her up, but didn't sign off on it until my mom was 9 months old.  Just an odd situation.. first 27 seems a little old to give a baby up for adoption and then, why wait until she's 9 months old?

Any and all information and help is appreciated.. just looking for where to start.  BTW, Michigan is where I'm located.  
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If you don't mind me asking, why would you and your siblings do this?

ETA: Also, it's very plausible that your mother was adopted out without her bio mom's consent (i.e. she wasn't a fit parent and had her rights severed).  

 
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Zow said:
If you don't mind me asking, why would you and your siblings do this?
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She was never adamant that she didn't want to find her birth parents, more along the lines of just didn't care.

My sisters and I were more curious as to health history and other possible relatives.

 
playin4beer said:
She was never adamant that she didn't want to find her birth parents, more along the lines of just didn't care.

My sisters and I were more curious as to health history and other possible relatives.
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Gotcha. Just curious. 

 
playin4beer said:
She was never adamant that she didn't want to find her birth parents, more along the lines of just didn't care.

My sisters and I were more curious as to health history and other possible relatives.
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i've got unknown grandparents (and presumably some great aunts, uncles and cousins) out there that i'm curious about 

i once brought up pursuing it to my family and they looked at me like i had 3 heads. 

the common refrain was "why does it even matter? why do you care?"  but said with an almost.. angry.. threatening tone.

based on your recent post i'd say our family lineage might follow similar circumstances. some people (the older generation especially) are ashamed of it and would prefer it remain buried. :shrug:

 
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mr. furley said:
i've got unknown grandparents (and presumably some great aunts, uncles and cousins) out there that i'm curious about 

i once brought up pursuing it to my family and they looked at me like i had 3 heads. 

the common refrain was "why does it even matter? why do you care?"  but said with an almost.. angry.. threatening tone.
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If you remember, I live in a smaller town, mom was adopted in this town.  It's possible there are friends/acquaintances that might be related.

 
playin4beer said:
If you remember, I live in a smaller town, mom was adopted in this town.  It's possible there are friends/acquaintances that might be related.
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:popcorn:  

my dad's side is more or less completely unknown. his mom is from here'ish.  my mom's dad is from Cadillac and his family history is...... checkered :oldunsure:  so maybe we are related.

 
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Not trying to hijack, but just to offer some insight as to the whole family health history side.

My wife is 47 and adopted. We have always played with the idea of a search, but her parents are alive and live in our town. We didn't do it because we didn't want to hurt them. We have two daughters 12 and 17 and we also didn't want to confuse them with the whole other set of grandparents idea. My wife was adopted because her parents couldn't have kids, but yet a few years after the adoption, they conceived her brother. My wife (whether they meant or not) has since always sort of been secondary to her parents.  Even though she is extremely successful. great wife, mom, etc, her bro is an absolute mess up in life (history of drug use, lives with a 400+ pound girl who he has a son with, 6 dogs/cats in a two bedroom apartment) , but he is their flesh and blood, so he is #1.

That out of the way--my wife went in for a mammogram 6 weeks ago and they found a mass, 3 weeks later, the ultrasound confirmed it. She had a biopsy last week (the wait for the results were the longest 3 days of our life) but she doesn't have cancer. They have determined she is in the high risk category and will need a mammogram every 6 months.

This has been the event that has pushed us over the edge to do a search. My 17 year old is going to college here and when we fill out all the medical forms we basically have to lie and say "No history of this.. No history of that" It is not fair to our kids at this point, when there could be something out there that could help us if one of our kids or down the road, grandkids, develop something.

We are going to start with the Ancestry genetic test. If none of her family has registered, it will be wasted money, but who knows. The only thing she knows is she was in an orphanage as a baby and has multiple older siblings.

 
DNA testing... submit a sample to one of the bigger companies.  See if any hits come back for relatives and start investigating from there.  If no hits, try one of the other companies.  

My 1/2 brother searched for his biological parents for years...nothing but dead ends.  Closest he got was through Catholic Charities, but they could not release any info without permission from the parents.  Fast forward to 2013.  My brother, was contacted by a woman who was searching for her twin.  She was adopted from the same agency as my brother around the same time frame.  He submitted a DNA sample to see if there was any connection to her.  There was not, BUT he did find a match to his DNA at the level of first cousin.  It turns out my cousin and her husband had sent in their DNA just to find out heritage info and such.  After contacting my cousin and piecing together some history and family connections, my cousin called my sister.  We pretty much had it all figured out, but my sister sent in a DNA sample as well, and sure enough it returned as a sibling.   Boom...after 45 years of being the only boy (4 sisters), I suddenly had a brother.  Lots of interesting details buried in this story, but my point is that DNA testing may lead you to the info you seek.

 
Galileo said:
DNA testing... submit a sample to one of the bigger companies.  See if any hits come back for relatives and start investigating from there.  If no hits, try one of the other companies.  

My 1/2 brother searched for his biological parents for years...nothing but dead ends.  Closest he got was through Catholic Charities, but they could not release any info without permission from the parents.  Fast forward to 2013.  My brother, was contacted by a woman who was searching for her twin.  She was adopted from the same agency as my brother around the same time frame.  He submitted a DNA sample to see if there was any connection to her.  There was not, BUT he did find a match to his DNA at the level of first cousin.  It turns out my cousin and her husband had sent in their DNA just to find out heritage info and such.  After contacting my cousin and piecing together some history and family connections, my cousin called my sister.  We pretty much had it all figured out, but my sister sent in a DNA sample as well, and sure enough it returned as a sibling.   Boom...after 45 years of being the only boy (4 sisters), I suddenly had a brother.  Lots of interesting details buried in this story, but my point is that DNA testing may lead you to the info you seek.
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My dumb question of the day is, will my DNA sample do?  Or should it be from my mom?

 
playin4beer said:
My dumb question of the day is, will my DNA sample do?  Or should it be from my mom?
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Wouldn't hurt to send in both, but if you don't want to spend all that cash, I would send your mom's.  Either will tell a story, assuming there is some data in the data base to match to, but your mom is one step closer genetically to the people you are seeking.

ETA...We used 23andMe in case you are wondering.  Whatever you would choose, make it one of the larger ones so there is a better chance of having someone's data in their data base to link to.

 
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If your mom was with your bio-grandma for 6-9 months I am wondering if there was an announcement in a local paper (if you knew where she was actually born). Library might have microfiche of the newspapers from that time.

 
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