Recently, New York started allowing adoptees to get a copy of their original, pre-adoption birth certificate with the names of the birth parents. When I joined ALMA – Adoptees Liberty Movement Association – in 1987, pre adoption records could only be obtained on the black market. The price all throughout the east coast and as far west as Texas was $1500.00. I thought it remarkable that the entire black market had the same price. That smacks of an organization controlling access.
Instead, I spent hours and hours in Erie County Hall looking up property records. I spent hours and hours in the basement of Erie County Hall looking at jury records, immigration records and anything else that I could find. I discovered that my family on my mother’s side isn’t from Germany. On my great-great-grandfather’s immigration papers, he renounced allegiance to the kind of Prussia. They were from Dittersdorf, East Prussia.
I found my great-grandmother’s marriage records and discovered that she was several months pregnant when she got married. When I was born, my great-grandfather, perhaps remembering his own history, put a silver dollar in my hand.
For $45, I got documentation that originally I was not only not allowed to have by law, but was also not allowed to even know existed..
This is my original birth certificate. My mother made up my father’s middle name. What she didn’t know until I found my father and later told her is that my middle name, Lee, is a Harmon family name. It’s also my father’s middle name. It was the name of my great-grandfather. He died in the Chieftain Mine in West Virginia on his first day of work. My great-grandmother was pregnant. She likely was thrown out of mine company owned housing. She went back to live with her parents and never remarried.
I didn’t know that birth certificates were two pages. I didn’t know that my mother was tested for syphilis while she was pregnant. I’ve no idea if that was something only done to single women or if all pregnant women had to be tested for syphilis.
This is the last page of my order of adoption. It was all but impossible to get records unsealed. What shocks me is that my mother and The Drunk would have had to agree to let me see my own records.
And to Judge Jacob A. Latona, here’s a single finger salute. I got my records and I didn’t need a judge’s permission.
Why is all this important? Have you ever filled out a medical history that included you, your parents and your siblings? I used to just write: Pursuant to NYS Domestic Relations Law sec. 100-140 inclusive, I am not allowed to know the answers to any of these questions. My knowledge of my medical history came from finding my father and requesting death records of his father, brother, and grandmother.
Have you ever tried to do a family history perhaps through Ancestry? If you’re an adoptee, there’s no history. No story about where your family came from. No finding out about family heroes and family embarrassments. Every family has both.
After I found my father, I discovered I’m Scott-Irish on his side. That explains all the times I have been asked if I’m Irish. All that searching showed me I’m Polish on my mother’s side. Further searching and a chance reading of a novel showed me my grandmother’s horrible German was Yiddish. We aren’t just Polish, we are Polish Jews.
I worship in a temple, I celebrate Jewish holidays, and I treasure Hibernian Heritage Day (March 17) when I can celebrate who I’ve always been….a Scott-Irish, Polish Jew.
Deb's Art 