Any help or advice re: tracing appreciated

Gander1973

Apologies if this appears in the wrong section, but if anyone might have any useful advice, it would be hugely appreciated.

I am a 43-year-old man hoping to find my birth mother, having been adopted in 1973 shortly after my birth in St. Patrick's on the Navan Road.

Cunamh have been extremely helpful and have given me some details of my mother's age when she gave birth, what she worked at, number of siblings, etc.

I have yet to locate my own birth certificate, but will try this very shortly.

If anyone has any suggestions, these would be very gratefully received.

Sincere thanks in advance.

Hermy

Hi Gander,

Welcome to Boards and well done on deciding to begin your search.
I've searched for and found my own birth mother (adopted through St Patrick's Guild in '78) so I'm happy to compare notes or answer any questions you might have.

That's good that you got some basic information from Cunamh about your birth mother.

Can I ask do you know your original first name and your date of birth?

If you know these two items that should help you when you go to the GRO.

Also, have you been in touch with the Adoption Authority of Ireland to request your non-identifying information? They may only be able to provide you with the same information that you already have from Cunamh but that's no harm.

Gander1973

Thanks so much, Hermy. Hugely appreciated!

I just have my own date of birth but don't know my birth mother's name.

I visited the GRO today and spend a few hours examining 2 of the 3 books of records detailing births in 1973. I've yet to find a record that tallies with the details I know so far, but will return tomorrow and try to work through the remaining book.

Delighted to hear that you had success - well done!

And sincere thanks again for taking the time to respond. Very good of you and greatly appreciated.

Gander1973

PS: I have not yet contacted the AA of I but will do this tomorrow.
Again, my sincere thanks. This is all extremely helpful.

Gander1973

Thanks so much, Hermy. Hugely appreciated!

I just have my own date of birth but don't know my birth mother's name.

I visited the GRO today and spend a few hours examining 2 of the 3 books of records detailing births in 1973. I've yet to find a record that tallies with the details I know so far, but will return tomorrow and try to work through the remaining book.

Delighted to hear that you had success - well done!

And sincere thanks again for taking the time to respond. Very good of you and greatly appreciated.

Hermy

You're very welcome Gander.

That's good you know you're way around the GRO - that's half the battle.

It was your own name I was wondering about rather than your birth mothers. If you have that and your date of birth you should be able to find the original record of your birth.

Good luck tomorrow and don't hesitate to post if there's anything more we can help with.

Ghekko

Gander1973 what month were you born in? My husband was in St Pats for 6 weeks October/November 1973. He wasn't actually born there though, but was transferred at a few days old from the hospital he was born in. For over 40 years he assumed he was born in St Pats! His adoptive mum also assumed it, as that's where she and his dad went to collect him. He has found his bmum too.

He registered with the contact preference register first. He then contacted the AAI who told him what agency was involved in his adoption. He then wrote to the agency and got basic info which helped me to research - using tips from here and Adoption Rights Alliance website/Facebook page. I found his bmum just before his first meeting with the social worker. It was like piecing together a jigsaw. Once the social worker knew that we knew where his bmum lived, she contacted her quickly. Things moved pretty fast then.

So there are ways and means to search albeit with a lot of perseverance. Hope you find your Cert tomorrow. Once you have your bmum's name work back to whatever year she was likely born and look up hers. Hopefully her name won't be too common so that it might be a bit easier to find her birth record.

Keep us updated.

Gander1973

Sorry, Hermy, I misunderstood. Alas, I don't know my name at birth, so that makes it trickier to find. But I'll keep going!

Sincere thanks for your help and support. I really do appreciate it.

Gander1973

Hi again Hermy and Ghekko,

Following a visit to the GRO today, I think I have found my birth records and have been able to view my birth mother's name.

I've checked to see if a marriage subsequently took place but there are only two married for ladies with this name and neither fits the facts I have so far.

If my birth mother did NOT go on to marry, is there any other way I can try to find details about her, do you know?

Sincere thanks as ever for any suggestions you might have!

Best wishes.

Hermy

As you have your mothers age when she gave birth to you you know roughly what year she was born.
The civil indexes up to 1958 are free to search at FamilySearch.org and if her name is relatively uncommon you may be able to pick out one or two likely entries and then return to the GRO to check the birth records for same.
In the meantime if you were to get non-identifying information from AAI it may give you your mothers home county which would be a great help.

kathy finn

Also keep in mind some mothers went by there middle name at birth, say if registered as mary josephine but goes as josephine, if you know how many siblings she had you can also cross reference useing mothers maiden name

mucker2b

Hi Gander, I'm in a similar situation to yourself although just a few weeks behind. I've been reading up on the tracing process and yours seems to be the most recent.
I was posting earlier in a different thread on whether to begin my search in Joyce House or Werburgh Street. I'm just trying to get my head around names of places and what to expect to find in each place at the moment. There seems to be a bit of ambiguity depending on which site I am reading.
I see you had some success recently in the GRO. Based on this I'm guessing that would be a good place for me to start. This is Werburgh Street, right?

Btw, congratulations on your progress.

Gander1973

Hi Mucker,

My PM won't go through!
Is it possible to give me an email address and I can try that way?

Claire9592

Hi,

I wanted to say that we have found my dad's family using a DNA test called 23andMe. Message me if you want further details. It bypasses the whole shady BS of the HSE and the Catholic church!!

mucker2b

Hi Claire,

Would that only work if the parents have had DNA testing done already for whatever reason?

pinkypinky

Wouldn't have to be the parents: it could be a half-sibling or cousin. They would still share a reasonable amount of genetic material.
You do need to test on all the sites though because they don't share their databases, and upload results to Gedmatch.com, the third party site.

I'm going down that route having exhausted traditional ones to find someone who was born in 1937. She may not be alive herself but possibly someone in her family like a child will have done a test.

mucker2b

Just to follow up on this, I managed to get my full birth name and my mother's name from searching in the GRO Werburgh Street this week. Next step for me more is to get my medical records from the hospital of birth. I'm hoping that there will be more information on this wrt my mother which would narrow down the search a bit and possibly give me something concrete to go on. I have a possible 5 different people with the same name at present, although realistically it is probably 3. I think this depends on whether the age my mother have was correct at the time of birth.

One bit of advice that I will give if anybody is searching is to not panic if your record is not in the book of your year of birth. I didn't realise that the entry is actually the registration and this could have happened months after the birth. I saw plenty entries from 4/5 years previous. This was related to me by the lady in the GRO after I asked if there were typos in the year of birth.

Thanks again to Gander for the advice.

Hermy

Well done on your search. Five possible entries is not too many to work with.

mucker2b wrote: »

One bit of advice...

Also worth noting that there may be handwritten late entries on the inside back cover of the given volume.