Hi! My name is Diane, I have a story to tell about my two families. Please bear with me, this is my first attempt at creating a web page. I hope to not only tell my story but to help other adoptees in their search. I have included a lot of good links, and suggestions.
I was born in Miami, Fl where I was adopted at birth. I have always known that I was adopted, but never the circumstances. When I reached the ripe old age of about 32, my Mother must have decided that I was old enough to handle it and told me this story.
My birth mother was 39 years old and worked for the City of Miami. My birth father was about 36 and was an electrician. He was from NY where he had a wife and children. He came to my adoptive father and asked would he help him out of a bad situation. My parents, being the kind people that they were, said yes. When I was born, my adoptive parents went to pick me up at the hospital where my adoptive mother actually met my birth father. She told me that this was about all that she could remember. She did describe him as about 5'7", dark wavy hair, and of medium build. She knew the lawyer that handled the case because he was a family friend, but he would just verify everything that she told me. Prior to my mom telling me this story I had found a birth bracelet that belonged to me that had the name Wilson. She said that was not my name, just a made up name like Smith or Jones.
In August of this year a friend of mine found her daughter that she had given up many years ago, I found this so exciting that I told my mom about it. We started talking about my adoption, and of course she related the same story, as she had told it before. I told her that I had started to search many times, but had never followed through. I really did not have enough information to possibly hope to find anything. I did ask her if she remembered who the agency was, or the social worker. Of course by now you have figured out that my mom doesn't forget anything. She said sure, Dorothy Stout was the Social Worker and the Judge was Marshall Wisehart. Shortly thereafter she said, "Frances Washburn". "Who is that", I asked. Your Mother. Well, of course, my jaw fell to the ground. After 47 years she had decided to let me in on the secret.
I immediately sent to the State of Florida, Post Adoption unit for my non-identifying information, and began an internet search for anything that I could find on this family. I posted to all the adoption sites and then sat back, took a deep breath, and tried to figure out how to begin. My first thought was old telephone books, which is always a good place to start. With the help of an Angel at the VSN (Volunteer Search Network) http://vsn.org/ she found listings for my birth mom in Miami in 1948, 1952-53, and in 1960. Frances A. Washburn lived with her Mother Grace E. Washburn, the w/o William L. Washburn. She also found a marriage for her in 1960 to Andrew W. Hughes. Continuing my search on the internet with this new information, I found an almost complete family history at Family Search Internet Genealogy Service (The LDS site) http://32.96.111.13/ . After this it got very frustrating, according to the site, Frances had died prior to 1990, I knew Grace had died in 1962, and I could find nothing on Andrew. Continuing on, I thought that I had found a death for Andrew in the SSDI (Social Security Death Index), but was unsure, the same with Frances. The only one I could find had died in 1996 in Michigan and this was in disagreement with the information that I had found. I now decided I needed to verify that my Frances was indeed the one that had married Andrew. I sent for a death certificate for Grace and a marriage certificat for Frances. Well, the informant on Grace's death certificate was Frances Hughes, so I knew that I did indeed have the right family. I was very satisfied with what I had found out, I now knew my roots, and where most of my birth family had come from. I would never meet her but, just the satisfaction of having this info filled a small hole in my heart.
The week before Thanksgiving I finally received a letter from the state, and my non-identifying information. You guessed it! It matched every thing that my Mother had told me all along, EXCEPT for two surprises. 1) I was born in an ambulance, she never made it to the hospital. 2) Frances had an 8 year old illegitimate daughter living at home at the time of my birth. We had always thought that my birth dad was just working in Miami for a short time, and he and Frances had had a fling, but this letter contradicted this. He was separated from his wife in NY, had custody of his children, who his Mother was raising for him. Now I had a new quest, to find my half sister, no easy project, let me tell you.
I started by writing down all the information that I had so far, and seeing what I needed to add. Her daughter must have gone to school, so my first query went out the the high school alumni of the schools in the neighborhoods of her last two addresses. www.classmates.com I called the appraisers office to find out exactly when the house was sold, I really got depressed, 1975. I was working with really old information. I started putting queries out everywhere, including the Adoption Forum at www.genforum.com . This is where my next Angel stepped in. I had an offer of free help from someone with the ability to access records that I could not. (legally, of course) She verified that the Frances Hughes that I had found in the SSDI was indeed the one that I was looking for, so we now knew that she had died in 1996 and probably in Michigan. Everything she found on her led to Las Vegas, so it was very confusing. While she was trying to locate owners of homes where Frances had lived in Vegas, I was busy trying to find an obituary. Of course, I looked in all the wrong places. This is where my first Angel stepped back in, she said there was an obituary listed for Frances Hughes in Las Vegas, that was the correct age and died the correct year, I just needed to send for it. (she found it at http://obits.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/obit.cgi ) A very nice person in Las Vegas voluteered to do a look up for me, and emailed me with the information that would change my life forever.
Frances did indeed have a daughter named Barbara, who lived in Las Vegas in 1996. My Angel was able to locate her and give me her telephone number.
Barbara and I had our reunion on December 14, 1999, and boy did we have fun. We are very similar in our likes and dislikes, we probably would have been friends at any point in our lives, if we had met. She brought lots of pictures of my birth mother and father. (we have different fathers) She gave me the name of my birth father and I am now in the process of trying to connect with his family. I do know that he died in 1985, but he did have other children.
THE SEARCH CONTINUES!!!!!!
www.familytreemaker.com/users/w/a/l/Diane-C-Wallis/index.html
This is my family as I have always known it.
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~pmg/genealogy.html
This is full of good genealogy links.
This is a great adoption site with plenty of registry links.
Diane Callahan Wallis
2241 NW Richard Ave.
Arcadia, FL 34266