Informal adoptions - 1870 to 1900ish

[Erato]

In the years before state regulation of adoption [say 1870-1900], was it necessary or customary for informally adopted children to have their names changed by some legal procedure?  Specifically, I am referring to Wisconsin where several of my ancestors adopted children in the years after the Civil War.  Some of these children assumed their adoptive surname and continued to use it throughout their lives while others did not.  Can any conclusion be drawn from this?

[Lisa in California]

According to this site, in the "early years", a formal adoption didn't necessarily happen.  In later years, they involved court proceedings.
https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Wisconsin_Vital_Records
Adoption Records

A guess: if they didn't use the adoptive surname maybe the family didn't have the money to have the name legally changed?  I think I remember seeing a movie or television show many years ago about a family (during the late 1800's) that couldn't afford to go to court to have the child's name legally changed.  (That wasn't the plot - it was just a small scene in the movie.)

Another guess:  if the children were "older" maybe they wanted to keep their birth surnames (and were allowed to make their own choices).

Did the boys keep their birth surnames?  Or, did the boys assume the adoptive surnames?  Maybe the family wanted to make sure the surname was passed on?

[Erato]

Here's an example. Gg-uncle John Ennis and his wife adopted four children, one girl and three boys.

1.  The girl, appears on the 1880 census in the Ennis household as Carrie Hull, aged 4, and the space for relationship to the head of household was left blank. She died of croup a year later and in the newspaper announcement was referred to as "Carrie Ennis, adopted daughter of J.S. Ennis."  I know who she was.  Her mother and one sister had died and her two surviving siblings were living with their grandparents but her birth father was still alive at the time of her death.

2.  In the 1900 census, three boys are listed as adopted -  Loren [20], James [16] and Ronnie [10] - all with the surname Ennis.  There is no way of knowing how long they had been in the Ennis household since there is no 1890 census and the 1895 state census named only the head of household.

By 1905, Loren had left home.  Although I have no idea who his birth parents were, I have traced him through the years and he continued with the Ennis surname until his death.  James and Ronnie were still in the Ennis household in 1905 but they were listed under their birth names, James Roberts and Rooney Rolzer [a gross misspelling of his true name] and were called 'boarders.'

In 1910, James and Ronnie were still living with John Ennis, James listed as a boarder and Ronnie as a grandchild.  James was called 'James Roberts' and he used that name for the rest of his life.  Ronnie was using the Ennis surname and he used it for the rest of his life.  I have been able to identify their birth parents and, in both cases, one or both parents lived well into the 1920s or beyond and were not far away.

In summary, the girl was referred to as Ennis but she was too young to have any say in the matter.  Two of the boys went by Ennis and at least one of them had family living in Wisconsin.  The other boy used his birth name but, even though his parents were not more than 20 km away, he didn't name them on his WWI draft registration as next of kin; he listed a brother instead.

[Lisa in California]

Is there a chance that little Carrie and Loren were adopted, perhaps around the same time (and right before her death)?  Maybe in 1900, John and his wife were trying to adopt James and Ronnie and by 1905 they had not been able to formally adopt the boys so put down their surnames and were shown as boarders.  I don't know very much about the American census process...maybe the enumerator was fairly stern and would not put down that they were adopted, if they hadn't gone through the formal process? 

Could the enumerator have misunderstood John Ennis and written down grandchild instead of godchild?  (Although, I've never seen godchild written on a census return.)

The boy who didn't write down his parents' names:  perhaps he was in constant touch with his brother and had not seen his birth parents in many years, so felt it was better to put his brother's name down?    Maybe there was some family separation between the boy and his birth parents and he no longer considered them next of kin?  Were they "older" or have health concerns, so he wanted any communication with next of kin to go through his brother?

Have you tried to find them in local newspapers to see if there are any clues to their early lives (I'm assuming you've looked as I know you are a very good/thorough researcher).

[Erato]

Hi Lisa in C -

Thanks for your thoughts on this subject.  It's hard to know what the circumstances of these adoptions were.  I haven't found any newspaper references except the death of Carrie.  They occurred in a rural community and there are several more examples among other ancestors in the same area [some took the family name, some didn't].

Originally, I thought that the boys had been taken in to provide cheap labor on the farm and perhaps there was an element of this involved.  On the other hand, I tend to assume that, if the adoptees were given or assumed the family name, then they were considered members of the family and not just charity cases or unpaid farm laborers.  When Carrie Hull died, she was called John Ennis's daughter even though she hadn't been with them for long and had living family members nearby.  Loren and Ronnie eventually moved away but kept the Ennis name so I suppose they must have felt comfortable with it.  James lived with the Ennises into his 20s and then stayed in the same community for the rest of his life but using the surname Roberts.

It seems, though, that there was a range of informal 'adoption' scenarios available.  Here's another example from the same community.  My grandfather said that his own father "when he was a boy, lived with a Tiffany family for four years, I believe about 1856 to 1860."  G grandpa would have been about 10-14 years old at that time.  He was not an orphan; he was a middle son in a large family with plenty of hands available for work on the farm.  I'm not sure who the Tiffanys were [there are several possibilities]  but presumably they needed a boy to help out around their farm and the Ennises had one to spare.  This was not an adoption but it doesn't look like a simple hired hand arrangement, either.

[Lisa in California]

Hi Erato:

Regarding your grandfather's father:  I wonder if the community tended to "look out" for one another?  Since he was in a large family, farm duties could have been done by the older children, with the younger ones doing easier things.  Letting him live with the Tiffany family could have helped them with their own farm and given the boy experience of his own.  He could have learned how to do things that he might not have a chance to do on his own farm until he was older.  If they were close neighbours, the families or at least the boy and his birth family could have spent Sundays together and if he was allowed to attend school, he may have seen his siblings every day at school.  Also, he may have even experienced benefits by possibly not having to share a room with siblings, maybe not had as many "hand me down" clothes, and even had an easier time during meal times?  Several years ago, an older man told us that he came from a large family.  He had several brothers.  While his family wasn't poor, he remembers filling his supper plate as quickly as he could, before his brothers had taken all of the food.  He always ate quickly, which was carried over from his youth when he had to eat before he lost his food. 

Have you tried to contact a local library or even a county or state library?  Many libraries offer "Ask A Librarian" feature.  Also, a neighbouring city may have an historical museum where someone on staff (or a volunteer) may know the region's history.  It sounds like it wasn't out of the ordinary to place children in neighbouring homes; perhaps someone may be able to explain how common it was, more reasons why it was done, during which decade(s) it was more common, etc.

I would be very interested in hearing what an historian has to say.

James is a somewhat common name.  Maybe for some reason he chose to use Roberts as his surname to distinguish who he was?  It sounds like there were a lot of Ennis folks in the area; maybe he wanted to stand out and by using Roberts, he was able to do that? 

Interesting thread, Erato.  If I have time later today, I might try again to look around.

Lisa

[Lisa in California]

Had the Ennis' lived in the area long or were they immigrants?  If they were immigrants, could they have known the other families from their "homeland"?  Maybe it was customary to have children help other families?

Is there a chance the families were related?  Could the Ennis parents have been cousins or another relative to the families you mention?

[Erato]

The Ennises arrived in Marquette County from Ontario in 1848 when that bit of the frontier [called the 'Indian Lands' which gives an idea of who they were displacing] was first opened up for settlement.  They were among the earliest settlers and were unrelated to any of the other people I have mentioned.  It was a large family - eight sons and two daughters all of whom survived to adulthood.

I think in those early frontier days people did look out for each other.  The population was sparse and they needed to cooperate in house building, damming streams, opening up roads, clearing land, and so on.  I can easily imagine them making a deal to send one son to help the neighbors in exchange for something else - 20 acres of bottom land or whatever.  Then again, maybe g grandpa was just a difficult child and they were glad to unload him for a few years while he did some growing up.

In his case, I don't think it was to broaden his educational opportunities.  My grandfather said that his father had managed to get about four years of schooling; a couple of months here, a couple there, mostly during the winters when there was less need for hands on the farm.  This pattern of schooling persisted even in my grandfather's day [1870s - 80s].  During the winters, he went to his one-room elementary school with eighteen year-olds who were learning to read and he said they would try to employ a male teacher for the winter term in order to spare the women teachers from harassment by hulking yokels.

And also up into that time, the people were accustomed to taking in stray members of the community.  The teachers were housed with local families, that was part of their salary.  Grandpa's family took in a childless widow for a period of time [a family friend, not a relative] and also a geologist and an archaeologist working in the area.  No doubt they charged these people some rent but it's not as if they were running a boarding house; they lived with the family.  So I'm guessing that, even up to 1900, adopting children was, in part, a matter of tradition and made up for the inadequate public social services.  After all, the alternative would probably have been some horrible orphanage/workhouse in Milwaukee.

[barbaramc]

This is earlier, of course, but George Washington "adopted" some of Martha's grandchildren (all Martha's children predeceased her leaving in some cases minor children). These adopted kids were all treated as children of the house and NONE of them took the name Washington.  So it wouldn't surprise me that it happened.