Adoption Records - birth parents known

[NikkiM]

I am trying to help a newly found 2nd cousin with a very complicated family to solve a family mystery.

Her mother gave birth to a boy (my cousin's half brother) in Cyprus (UK RAF base) in 1963 and he was given up for adoption to a senior officer. We know the names of the birth parents and the child but not the adoptive parents. Any suggestions as to how we can find him?

 

[peter]

DNA is the simplest solution - most adoptees who want to find their birth parents take a DNA test, and if this man hasn't it probably means he's not interested in connecting.

 

[Sue_3]

These are just my first thoughts, others may have more or better ideas.

When you say 'given up for adoption to a senior officer', that suggests to me that it was perhaps an informal adoption rather than an official one - do you know? Have you found the original birth certificate for the child, to confirm the birth details?

Are you aware of the Adoption Contact Register detailed on the gov.uk website / has your cousin joined it (there is a fee)?

You can also try this register https://www.ukbirthadoptionregister.com/index.php

I'm not an expert in this area, but I have these links that provide a lot of information, some of which may be relevant and useful :-
https://www.genguide.co.uk/source/adoption-records/
https://www.pac-uk.org/our-services/adopted-adults/

If the adoption was an official one following UK regulations there will probably be a paper trail that can perhaps be discovered - I say 'probably' because it is not unknown for records to be lost or missing and 'perhaps' because it can be difficult for someone to find the paper trail that exists, especially if they are not the adopted person.

If your cousin does an Ancestry DNA test (and uploads to other sites) they MAY find that their half-brother or one of his descendants has tested.

Hope this helps.

 

[peter]

Excellent suggestions - but DNA would probably be quicker and cheaper, and it's certainly much more likely to be successful.

Why? Partly, because as Sue_3 pointed out, one of his descendants might have tested (irrespective of whether they knew their father/grandfather was adopted), which improves the odds of a match.

But mainly because when you look at it from the adoptee's point of view, if he takes the Ancestry DNA test he's going to find thousands of birth cousins whatever happens. In other words, by taking an autosomal DN test he's guaranteed to get a result - all that is unknown is how difficult it will be to identify the birth parents from those thousands of clues.

Finally, by using DNA he'll get matches from both sides of his tree - the other routes are far less likely to identify the birth father, whose name may not appear anywhere in the records.

 

[cfbandit]

Agree, DNA is a good start.

1963 is the cutoff for military records to be made public, so those records aren't going to be available to put a pool of candidates together. If she's near London, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives https://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/collections/archives has the papers and records of several of the commanders of the base at Cyprus, but they may be locked off as well. They're unindexed and she'd have to hope it was mentioned as a part of an officers diary or base notes in their collection. Follow the steps to contact them way before making a visit - they have been very helpful to me in the past about figuring out if it is something that is locked off due to privacy laws or given alternative recommendations to me.

 

[NikkiM]

My cousin has tested her DNA with MyHeritage and that's how we found each other. She knows both her birth parents and the names of her half brothers birth parents (they share a mother), but has no clues as to his adoptive parents or names as her mother (who has now passed) wouldn't talk about it.

We haven't been able to find the original birth certificate but it's certainly worth her joining the UK birth adoption register.

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[peter]

Shame she didn't test at Ancestry: although some people transfer their results from Ancestry to MyHeritage it's only a fraction of the total. Some people may be put off by the cost, others by the fact that MyHeritage were hacked in 2018 and the email addresses of 92 million registered users stolen.

According to the latest table at the ISOGG site Ancestry have three times as many results in their database. MyHeritage does sell in more countries but that's actually a disadvantage in this case (assuming the story of the boy being adopted by an RAF officer is correct - it might not be, of course).

 

[NikkiM]

I'm trying to persuade her to take another test with Ancestry and have explained why. I've also suggested she should consider joining the UK birth adoption register in case he is looking.