Adopted people.....

[loudam]

I'm working on my own family at the moment and we know my GM was adopted/taken in by the family she grew up with, no one quite knows what actually happened, the general story was that she was adopted from an orphanage in passage co.cork..... but my dad remembers being told to "mind his own business" at times he asked anything about where she came from....

I've gotten hers and my grandads marriage cert and it gives her fathers name on it with dead after it, but thats about it, is it going to be a dead end or is there a way around it...

My own personal take on it is that I think theres some connection with the family who brought her up, the woman didn't get married until my GM was about 3 or so and had 3 kids herself then, no one knows when my GM came to live with them, so I have wondered was she this womans child and once she got married she took her back or maybe she was another family members child, I'm not sure how common it was to just adopted a child then, 1926....

[aghadowey]

There was no such thing as official adoptions in the 1920s but it wasn't uncommon for families to 'adopt' a child who had lost one or more parents- sometimes the family was related but not always. This might be of interest:
http://www.adoptionloss.ie/history.htm

[loudam]

This is what I was thinking that they didn't just happen to take her in without some connection, along with the fact that I had thought there wasn't actual adoptions then aswell....

I'm not even too sure if the name for her father is right, or if it was just a name to put down, I've searched based on year of birth and surname but haven't found anything, I do have a DOB and date of death but again I wouldn't be certain of the DOB either....

[aghadowey]

It may be that she didn't know her parents' names or the exact date of her birth if she was looked after by another family since she was young (remember that years ago children would probably not be told much and wouldn't have been encouraged to ask questions). Children weren't always looked after by close relatives so it can sometimes be difficult to figure out what happened.
Have you tried tracking down all branches of the family (including the 'adoptive' family) to see if any stories have been passed down?

[loudam]

A woman who was known as my GM's sister is still alive but I doubt she'd say anything either, theres very much a veil of secrecy around it all and to be honest I don't think theres that much of a story, just the way things were then, no one spoke about them!!

I'll just have to see if anything comes up in time....