Genealogy Chat

Hi Can anyone tell me if official adoption was recognised at this time. While searching for my grandfather it has been found that he was born out of wedlock ,in 1889 ,father unnamed on birth cert. His mother later married in 1896 and my grandfather had this man's surname on his marriage(1918 )and death (1958) certificates. How would he have been able to do this if he had not officially changed his name.

Hope someone can help as i'm a tat confused

Thank you Sue.

Official adoption didnt start til 1927, i expect when his mum married he took his stepfathers surname. you can call yourself any name providing you are not doing it to defraud

I think it was 1927 when formal adoption began. What happened with your grandad sounds a little like what happened with my great-grandad. Born Samuel Rowland, the illegitimate son of Sarah, then when Sarah married a Searson Norris, Samuel was written down as "Samuel R Norris" on the census and called "son" to the head of the house. Yet when he married, he called himself Samuel Rowland and named his father as Searson Norris.

I would think he could have taken the name legally - probably people would have just known him as the son (or informally adopted son) of his stepfather anyway. Particularly if his stepfather had become the father figure in his life, it might be that the stepfather wanted him to be seen as his son, rather than a child from his wife's earlier relationship for the sake of respectability.

There was no official adoption before 1927. My GGrandmother died leaving a baby, 1899, I looked everywhere to try to find more info on her. Put just her name into a census site, and there she was as 'adopted Daughter' with another family. Since then I have been unable to find her anywhere. Not been able to look yet on 1911 census, as I have been ill and not got round to it.

Thank you everyone for your help and information .

I was a little confused as i thought you had to use the name actually on your birth certificate to register a marriage and death, and his pension he would have had to produce a birth certificate surely . Not that it matters , he is still my grandfather after all, but it has made the person who i though was my great-grandfather not so , and because he was illegitimate i will never know . Its makes my descendants a whole different family Ohhhh no!!!!!

This family searching is certainly interesting ,exciting and defiantly surprising !!

Thank you all again. Sue

just found this

It was in the early 1880s that the problem of street children came to the notice of the Salvation Army. The solution they offered was long term fostering, which in time evolved in to formal legal adoptions. Before the 1926 Adoption Act, legal adoptions took place in a solicitors office rather than in a court. A document of conveyance was drawn up and in cases where the Salvation Army was involved, a copy of the document was kept. Some of these still survive in our Archives.

In 1882, the first adoption book (Book 1) commenced. However, by August of 1885, only sixteen pages had been filled. The last of these entries, a boy R. G., was adopted by Miss Emma Booth, as an example to others.



Got a feeling it was 1926 in the uk and 1930 in Scotland.

Thank you Sheila, thats really interesting, so there is a very slim chance that he could have been adopted properly by his Stepfather, its a shame such details weren't as easy to obtain as say the census records. Or if such deatails had been on the census records.

I don't ask for much do I !!!!!!

Sue

My g.grandmother's sister married in 1894 and had no children on the 1901 census and only one child aged 6 on the 1911 census. Her husband's WW1 service record had the child listed with date of birth 18/12/1904 but no end of searching has found a birth certificate, the name is quite rare and even a phonetic search on freeBMD comes out with nothing remotely possible. The WW1 record has 'Som Hse verification' under place of birth and a note says 'date of birth verified from Som Hse Verification of child'. Is this likely to be an adoption?