A friend at work is adopted and interested in trying to locate her birth mother.
She paid a service to try for her, but they were not sucessful. She thinks they just took her money and only says that it was “a lot” of money.
She has few clues.
She knows her (of course) date of birth and the name and place of the hospital where she was born (which has been long- since closed). She knows what state the birth mom came from and how old the birth mom was when she delivered. She said she saw her original (?) birth certificate and that it had some information blacked out on it.
Can anyone recommend a reputable service or activities would be fruitful for my friend? She asked me because she thinks I am good at “teh internets”.
There is no one way to go about it. It’s a lot like detective work with very few clues. In your friend’s case, you are essentially starting without clues. You can pay an agency to search for you, but with nothing to go on, they could easily burn through a lot of money and never get any results. They could also be a less than reputable agency and take your money and do little in return, but the fact that they don’t get any results doesn’t necessarily imply that they are a bad search agency.
There are many online places where you can register with what information you have, and many of them are free. You might get lucky and get a match that way.
The alt.adoption FAQ is a good resource: Genealogy/adoption Index
You’ll find lots of links to search registries, support groups, and all sorts of things that help.
One word of caution. I used to talk to a lot of adoptees about this while I was searching. Based on my experience, better than half of the stories end up with a happy ending, but there are many cases where the reunion is not a happy one. Hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst.
In case you are interested, in my case my birth mother had died before I could find her. I now have a good relationship with my “birth relatives”.
You can give your friend my e-mail address (add a yahoo.com after my doper name) if she wants to get in contact with me.
Could be tough. My sister and I were adopted from the same agency, but 6 years apart. She went to search for her birth parents, but was told that the agency back in those days intentionally swapped and altered information, including birth dates, so that there would be no chance of finding one another again.
Thanks Nava- the hospital closed a couple of years ago. My friend said she got a copy of her BC but that the information is blacked out. I wonder where the actual records went after the closure?
Thanks Engineer-comp-geek. I’m going to go poke around your links for a while.
Thanks Smitty. I suspect some misinformation already from things my friend told me she ‘knows’.
I would make a website. I recently took a free class and you can get a domain for about $6/year and a webhost for like $2.50 a month for simple sites.
Then you have to read a few books on search engines to learn how to get your page to climb up.
Most people at one time or another will Google their name or Yahoo their name and information and if you’re page comes up your birth mother may find you.
I would go to usenet (or google groups if you don’t have usenet) and look around for more information and advice.
The thing is does your colleague REALLY want to find their birth mom ?
So many adopted people build up fantasies about their parents being Hollywood stars ,wealthy Ivy leagueres ,royalty and the like .
What if your colleagues parent was a convicted child abuser ?alcoholic,drug abuser ,criminally insane?
Or even just hated kids ?
The chances of the absent parent being a less then nice person rather then a poor ,unlucky great person ;forced to abandon the child she loved due to circumstances is oddeswise pretty major .
If I had the choice of finding out that my mum had smothered her six previous babies and had been put away for it or remaining in lifelong ignorance,I think I know which one I’d prefer.
Life isn’t a fairy tale .