Were They Adopted? If so Where would I find Records?

[Jan Ann]

Hi There!

When she was little my nan(b 1915) remembers visiting her Aunt Emily (nickname Pem) and her uncle George Webb who had a butchers shop in Inkerman Street Aston, Birmingham - she didnt like going there because they had animal carcasses in the back room! - this was spooky to a small child as you can imagine!

Anyhow, I digress!  In the 1901 census this Aunt Emily (nee Jones) and uncle Frederick George Webb had two children - They married in 1894 - according to the census had two  children Norman b abt 1895 and Stanley b abt 1897 - I can't find either of their births registered between 1894 and 1901 - therefore I have reached the conclusion that they were either not registered ( i find this a bit strange as both parents were from educated backgrounds) or they were adopted - If the latter is the case where would I find adoption records for this period?

All help greatfully appreciated

Cheers
Jan

[Valda]

Formal adoption (as in legal adoption) began in 1927 when the records start and can be found in the Family Records Centre. Before that adoption/fostering was informal and other than poor law records or orphanage records you won' t find anything.

If they were the children of Frederick and Emily could these be their second names recorded on the census not their first names?

e.g.

September quarter 1895 Aston
George Norman Webb

December quarter 1896 Aston
Augustus Stanley Webb

Regards

Valda

[Jan Ann]

Hi Valda

Yes indeedy this could be them - espescially George Norman as his father was also known as George - never come across an Augustus in the family = still there is a first  time for everything!

Cheers Valda
Jan

[Valda]

Ancestry and FreeBMD search engines work differently. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Ancestry has the more powerful search engines but its version of the civil registration index has fewer entries.

The Ancestry search engine when searching for a Norman Webb will give you any Norman Webb it can find. It isn't interested whether Norman is the first or second name it will give you all (in this case) Webbs that have Norman somewhere. That is important to know for people who when they become adults don't like their first names and transpose them with their second names, or parents who thought calling a child George Norman Webb after his father was a good idea and then found the two Georges just led to confusion, so began calling the child by its second name.

The FreeBMD index is the bigger index but has the less powerful search engines (we all know how slow it can be, but after all it is free).

Ask FreeBMD to search for Norman Webb and that is precisely what it does. It finds any Webbs with Norman as a first name. If Norman had been registered as Norman George Webb, FreeBMD would have found him. If you searched on FreeBMD you didn't ask FreeBMD to search for any Webbs with Norman as a second name, first name unknown. In which case you might have noticed the second name Norman and reached the conclusion of names being transposed.

For that search you use the asterisk

*Norman Webb

a slower search. The FreeBMD search engine is perhaps having to trawl through all the first names to find the second and sometimes it times out. You may have to be pretty time specific on this search if FreeBMD is under pressure and having a bad hair day. Surprisingly the search engine seems to manage better if you just put in

*
Webb

and then you scroll down all the Webbs produced looking for one with Norman as a second name.
In the end if you have access to Ancestry and the name is the index this type of search is a lot quicker using Ancestry and no asterisk is necessary.

Regards

Valda

[Jan Ann]

Hi Valda

Thanks so much for this !  I hadnt realised that these searches could be so intricate! I will bear this in mind when searching in Future

Thank You, you are a star

Cheers
Jan