Now that I've told my story of the search for my birth mother in the first "Not a Slam Dunk", I'll tell about my search for my birth father.
Because my birth name was Baby Girl Colwall, I assumed that my birth father's last name was Colwall, but initially, I didn't have a first name. Once I found out what his first name was, I started searching phone directories in my local area for him. Since this was prior to the ability to do "people searches" via the Internet, I had to rely on information operators doing look-ups for me. In 1991 I called an information operator in New York state, and explained that I didn't know what city to look in but I was looking for a phone number for an Everett George ColwAll. She came back saying that she couldn't find an Everett George ColwAll, but found an Everett G. ColwEll in Parish NY and she gave me the number.
I nervously dialed the number. When the gentleman answered, I naively told him that I was looking for my birth parents and did he know a Margaret Josephine Holliday. The reason I say naively is because after all these years of searching, I've learned that it's not a good idea to blind side someone with that you think he/she is your birth parent and you should never tell a third party who answers the phone that you think the person you are calling about is your birth parent. There are several reasons why, and I will talk about them in another blog. Anyway, Mr. Everett George Colwell sort of chuckled, said something about his wife's name not being Margaret and there were no Margarets in his Colwell family. He offered to have his then 80+ year old mother, Alma, send me a list of the Colwell women in his family to prove that there were no Margaret's in his family.
The letter with the list arrived about a week later. Sure enough, there were no Margarets listed. Alma then went into detail about who in the Colwell family was buried where and where to go in their county to get more genealogy information if that would help me find my birth mother. Thanks Alma, I really appreciate your efforts, and it was so sweet of you to do that, but that wasn't what I had asked your son.
I sort of thought that just maybe I had talked with my birth father, but because he didn't give any indication one way or another, and because his last name was spelled a little differently than my birth name, and because I hadn't really checked to see if there were other Everett George Colwalls in other states, I thought I would leave this one alone for a while. I didn't want to make trouble for him if it turned out he wasn't my birth father. He was married. I didn't know if he was married before I was conceived or after, but if he was married before, it could make trouble between him and his wife. She might wonder if he was fooling around on her. I left finding my birth father alone and started focusing more on finding my birth mother.
Fast forward to the early 2000's. By now searching on the Internet was more common and user friendly. I posted on places like Ancestry.com and other genealogy sites. Then I started learning about web sites for adoptees who were searching and posted on several of them. I started again looking for an Everett George ColwAll. Couldn't find a single ColwAll in the country except one or two who died in the 1700 and 1800's. Search Angles started sending me listings for and Everett George ColwEll, but the listings showed him as having died in Tennessee. I kept thinking that "this couldn't be him, my Everett wouldn't be in Tennessee because my birth certificate said that he was New York born and bred (how dumb is that?), and his age didn't match at all what my birth certificate said he would be." My birth certificate said that he was 32 at the time of my birth. This guy would have only been 24 at the time of my birth.
I dug in harder looking for either an Everett George ColwAll or Everett George ColwEll. I had Search Angels and other people investigating for me and with me. None of us could come up with another Everett George ColwAll or ColwEll. We tried different variations of spelling the last name and still couldn't come up with anyone. Every one kept coming back to me with this same person.
Finally, I relented and decided to try to locate a member of the family of this Everett. After a few weeks and with the help of a couple of Search Angels, I was able to locate a nephew of Everett's.
Again, I nervously dialed the phone; this time thinking that I could actually be speaking with a cousin I had never known. The gentleman on the other end WAS Everett's nephew. He said that he knew his uncle quite well as Everett had sort of taken him under his wing when the nephew was a young boy. I knew that I was breaking a cardinal rule about not revealing to third parties that the person you were looking for was your birth parent. But this guy seemed so kind, friendly and non judgemental. I told myself that Everett and Alma were gone and if his Everett was my birth father, I wanted to be up front with him right off the bat. It was a gamble that could have back fired in a big way, but fortunately it didn't.
We talked a while, and he told me that it was quite possible that his Everett could be my birth father because Everett did have a few girl friends before he settled down to get married late in life. Everett and his wife did not have any children together. He also said that Everett's wife was quite a few years older than Everett. So now I'm thinking "that could explain the discrepancy in age on my birth certificate. Maybe my birth mother was older than he and he lied about his age to make it look like he was the older one". Back in the "40's and '50's it was a big deal that the man be older than the woman.
The nephew gave me a little Colwell family history. The family originated in Ireland. He told me that Everett had a brother who had passed away and a sister who was still alive (she is gone now).
Unfortunately, nephew didn't know any names of Everett's girlfriends. The only one still alive who might remember the girlfriends names was Everett's sister. The only problem was that Evelyn thought the world of Everett and couldn't bear to think that he wasn't a virgin when he got married, little lone having an illegitimate child. So to bring news to her that one had come crawling out of the woodwork, well you get the picture.
Nephew emailed me a few pictures of Everett and two of his girlfriends and I emailed him a few pictures of myself. He showed my pictures to some of his family and they reported "You look like you could be a Cowell". I don't see a huge resemblance of Everett in me, but one of the girlfriends has many of my features. Maybe? Just maybe? Could she be my Margaret? And, if she was my birth mother, then would that mean that Everett was indeed my birth father? Nephew tried to find out the names of the ladies in the pictures, but no one knew. All that was on the backs of the pictures was "Everett" or "Everett and girlfriend". Drat!! Foiled again!!
I sent away to the Social Security Administration for a copy of Everett's card application. You can do that for a $27 fee if the person is deceased. It can give you information on a person's date and location of birth, parent's names and mother's maiden name. I got that back and right around the same time, I received a copy of some of Everett's military records. As I was browsing through the documents, I discovered that Everett had been in the military for 4 years, out for a few years, then back in for 4 more years. During that middle time he was out of the military, he was working in Syracuse not far from where I was told that my birth mother was from. He was in that area at the time I was conceived. "Well", I thought, "the time frame certainly fits". Then I was going through the documents again and I saw it! His signature! His own handwriting! My knees almost buckled! His handwriting matched mine to a tee! Exactly! I had never in my life seen any one's hand writing look like mine. I looked at the application for his Social Security card. There it was again, his signature looking exactly like mine. He had printed out the rest of the form and lo and behold his printing looked just like mine did when I was in my early 20's. That awkward, I'd rather be doing this in cursive kind of printing. It was block printing just like I did before I worked on trying to make my printing look more like cursive letters only not connected.
Because my birth name was Baby Girl Colwall, I assumed that my birth father's last name was Colwall, but initially, I didn't have a first name. Once I found out what his first name was, I started searching phone directories in my local area for him. Since this was prior to the ability to do "people searches" via the Internet, I had to rely on information operators doing look-ups for me. In 1991 I called an information operator in New York state, and explained that I didn't know what city to look in but I was looking for a phone number for an Everett George ColwAll. She came back saying that she couldn't find an Everett George ColwAll, but found an Everett G. ColwEll in Parish NY and she gave me the number.
I nervously dialed the number. When the gentleman answered, I naively told him that I was looking for my birth parents and did he know a Margaret Josephine Holliday. The reason I say naively is because after all these years of searching, I've learned that it's not a good idea to blind side someone with that you think he/she is your birth parent and you should never tell a third party who answers the phone that you think the person you are calling about is your birth parent. There are several reasons why, and I will talk about them in another blog. Anyway, Mr. Everett George Colwell sort of chuckled, said something about his wife's name not being Margaret and there were no Margarets in his Colwell family. He offered to have his then 80+ year old mother, Alma, send me a list of the Colwell women in his family to prove that there were no Margaret's in his family.
The letter with the list arrived about a week later. Sure enough, there were no Margarets listed. Alma then went into detail about who in the Colwell family was buried where and where to go in their county to get more genealogy information if that would help me find my birth mother. Thanks Alma, I really appreciate your efforts, and it was so sweet of you to do that, but that wasn't what I had asked your son.
I sort of thought that just maybe I had talked with my birth father, but because he didn't give any indication one way or another, and because his last name was spelled a little differently than my birth name, and because I hadn't really checked to see if there were other Everett George Colwalls in other states, I thought I would leave this one alone for a while. I didn't want to make trouble for him if it turned out he wasn't my birth father. He was married. I didn't know if he was married before I was conceived or after, but if he was married before, it could make trouble between him and his wife. She might wonder if he was fooling around on her. I left finding my birth father alone and started focusing more on finding my birth mother.
Fast forward to the early 2000's. By now searching on the Internet was more common and user friendly. I posted on places like Ancestry.com and other genealogy sites. Then I started learning about web sites for adoptees who were searching and posted on several of them. I started again looking for an Everett George ColwAll. Couldn't find a single ColwAll in the country except one or two who died in the 1700 and 1800's. Search Angles started sending me listings for and Everett George ColwEll, but the listings showed him as having died in Tennessee. I kept thinking that "this couldn't be him, my Everett wouldn't be in Tennessee because my birth certificate said that he was New York born and bred (how dumb is that?), and his age didn't match at all what my birth certificate said he would be." My birth certificate said that he was 32 at the time of my birth. This guy would have only been 24 at the time of my birth.
I dug in harder looking for either an Everett George ColwAll or Everett George ColwEll. I had Search Angels and other people investigating for me and with me. None of us could come up with another Everett George ColwAll or ColwEll. We tried different variations of spelling the last name and still couldn't come up with anyone. Every one kept coming back to me with this same person.
Finally, I relented and decided to try to locate a member of the family of this Everett. After a few weeks and with the help of a couple of Search Angels, I was able to locate a nephew of Everett's.
Again, I nervously dialed the phone; this time thinking that I could actually be speaking with a cousin I had never known. The gentleman on the other end WAS Everett's nephew. He said that he knew his uncle quite well as Everett had sort of taken him under his wing when the nephew was a young boy. I knew that I was breaking a cardinal rule about not revealing to third parties that the person you were looking for was your birth parent. But this guy seemed so kind, friendly and non judgemental. I told myself that Everett and Alma were gone and if his Everett was my birth father, I wanted to be up front with him right off the bat. It was a gamble that could have back fired in a big way, but fortunately it didn't.
We talked a while, and he told me that it was quite possible that his Everett could be my birth father because Everett did have a few girl friends before he settled down to get married late in life. Everett and his wife did not have any children together. He also said that Everett's wife was quite a few years older than Everett. So now I'm thinking "that could explain the discrepancy in age on my birth certificate. Maybe my birth mother was older than he and he lied about his age to make it look like he was the older one". Back in the "40's and '50's it was a big deal that the man be older than the woman.
The nephew gave me a little Colwell family history. The family originated in Ireland. He told me that Everett had a brother who had passed away and a sister who was still alive (she is gone now).
Unfortunately, nephew didn't know any names of Everett's girlfriends. The only one still alive who might remember the girlfriends names was Everett's sister. The only problem was that Evelyn thought the world of Everett and couldn't bear to think that he wasn't a virgin when he got married, little lone having an illegitimate child. So to bring news to her that one had come crawling out of the woodwork, well you get the picture.
Nephew emailed me a few pictures of Everett and two of his girlfriends and I emailed him a few pictures of myself. He showed my pictures to some of his family and they reported "You look like you could be a Cowell". I don't see a huge resemblance of Everett in me, but one of the girlfriends has many of my features. Maybe? Just maybe? Could she be my Margaret? And, if she was my birth mother, then would that mean that Everett was indeed my birth father? Nephew tried to find out the names of the ladies in the pictures, but no one knew. All that was on the backs of the pictures was "Everett" or "Everett and girlfriend". Drat!! Foiled again!!
I sent away to the Social Security Administration for a copy of Everett's card application. You can do that for a $27 fee if the person is deceased. It can give you information on a person's date and location of birth, parent's names and mother's maiden name. I got that back and right around the same time, I received a copy of some of Everett's military records. As I was browsing through the documents, I discovered that Everett had been in the military for 4 years, out for a few years, then back in for 4 more years. During that middle time he was out of the military, he was working in Syracuse not far from where I was told that my birth mother was from. He was in that area at the time I was conceived. "Well", I thought, "the time frame certainly fits". Then I was going through the documents again and I saw it! His signature! His own handwriting! My knees almost buckled! His handwriting matched mine to a tee! Exactly! I had never in my life seen any one's hand writing look like mine. I looked at the application for his Social Security card. There it was again, his signature looking exactly like mine. He had printed out the rest of the form and lo and behold his printing looked just like mine did when I was in my early 20's. That awkward, I'd rather be doing this in cursive kind of printing. It was block printing just like I did before I worked on trying to make my printing look more like cursive letters only not connected.
I PDFed Nephew a copy of the documents and told him about the handwriting thing. His comment was "One more piece of proof that he's your father." I am 99.9% sure that this Everett is my birth father. Of course, the only way to be 100% sure is through a DNA test. Unfortunately, at this time there are no tests that can for sure determine if Nephew and I are cousins. Everett's sister passed away this past June. But even if she were still alive, there are no DNA tests that would prove 100% that she is my aunt. When that technology comes out, you bet I will be first in line for the testing.
2 comments:
Sharon I just wanted to let you know that I've been following your blogs here, and it is so interesting and heartbreaking. I give you so much credit for telling your story, and continuing your search. My fingers are crossed for you to someday find all of your answers.
Lots of love,
Sue
Awww Sue,
Thank you for your support. I know the answers will come, if not in this lifetime, maybe the next.
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