I am starting to wonder if my great grandmother Frances Jane Ward was adopted.
I have a baptism record for Frances Jane which reads born 10 October 1849 and baptised 10 November 1850 at St Thomas, Birmingham. Her parents were William and Frances Ward.
William and Frances (nee Ware) were married on 3 October 1841 at St Martin, Birmingham. I have no other children for the couple that I can find records for. Also when William and Frances emigrated to NZ from Liverpool in 1856, they came out with just Frances Jane who was age 7 at the time.
When Frances Jane was 17 she married under the maiden name of Taylor and one of her children (my grandmother) was registered at birth as a Taylor and Frances Jane's name on the birth register was Frances Jane Taylor (no father info) but none of her other children were given the name Taylor. Frances Jane had 12 children - 3 from her marriage to John James Keefe and 9 from her de facto relationship with Charles DeMalmanche (my g/mother was from that relationship).
I was just curious to see where the Taylor name came from and did a search on Find My Past for a Frances Jane Taylor and found a birth record for that name which read - Frances Jane Taylor, born Aston, Warwickshire, 1849, birth quarter 4, Vol 16, Page 171. I then went onto GRO but I got no results, also searched with lesser information as well as under the surname Ward.
William and Frances were married for eight years before Frances Jane was born and I do realize back in those days there were a lot of infant deaths but it is the fact why did she also use Taylor as her maiden name when she married, and also her father William Ward was a witness to the marriage, and on one of her childrens birth registrations.
Does anyone know how I can go about finding out about adoptions for Birmingham or any other part of Warwickshire? The birth record I found on FindMyPast does not have any father or mother information.
Thanks in advance for any help
Kind Regards, Judy