Starting in January 2020, all New York adoptees over the age of eighteen will be able to get their original and unredacted birth certificates. New York will become the 10th state to restore the right to adoptees to obtain their birth record, which will name their birth mother. Descendants of…
Would you like free access to databases of genealogy records? The New York Genealogical & Biographical Society recently announced a substantial expansion of available New York records. Remote access to a collection of New York Roman Catholic vital records is available with a membership to the New York Genealogical &…
A Pennsylvania adoptee search for birth parents usually requires more research beyond obtaining the original birth certificate, a version of which is available to adoptees. The Non Certified Copy of Original Birth Certificate lists the child’s name, the birth mother’s full name, the birth mother’s age and the birth father,…
Free military records of your ancestors or more recent service members are available to everyone through state and federal archives and libraries. Digital collections of scanned records are increasingly online. Here’s a smattering of state-level records. Go to Florida Memory at the state archives site to search World War I…
Have you searched for an ancestor by name in the U.S. Census and not found a record, even though they were born before 1940? If you found her in the 1930 Census but not the 1940 one she could have died or changed her name in the intervening years. But…
You’ve tested your DNA through Ancestry.com and now you want to send a message to your Ancestry DNA matches through the application’s messaging program. There is one method that many researchers have found is more likely to reach the recipient. Before you reach out, formulate your questions and conduct enough…
Search for your ancestors and relatives who were married in New Jersey. This is an enormous aid to adoptees whose birth parents were married but for whom you have the last name of just one party. And if the adoptee was born in New York City, the given surname may…
Adoptees searching for relatives in the New York boroughs have a new (free!) resource to verify and supplement the (fee-based!) Ancestry.com, New York City Marriage Indexes. The marriage index images for all five New York City boroughs from 1930-1972 are now online, an addition to the 1908-1929 collection that was…
SFGenealogy.com asked me to pen a short guide, How To Do Your Own Adoption Search In California, which highlights some of the recommendations I offer on AdoptionSearcher.com. I didn’t mention petitioning the court to open closed adoption files because this is generally not successful. However, courts in closed states have released…
Birth family are the people you’re biologically related to — mom, dad, siblings and children. The link for adoptees and birth mothers and fathers is usually severed soon after birth. How can the U.S. Census help these relatives find each other? Even though the census is available through 1940, only,…
