Not a Slam Dunk

So, because a formal adoption never took place, my birth records were not sealed. You see, in nearly all states, once a child is adopted they are given an amended birth certificate showing the adoptive parents as the parents of the child and the original birth certificate and all information relating to that child and his/her birth parents are sealed. Mine weren't. I was able to go to the vital records department in my county to get a copy of my original birth certificate.

Now, I have the names of my birth parents. Great, it should be fairly easy - a slam dunk - to find them. I've gotta tell ya, it wasn't and still isn't. I did eventually, after several years and lots of help from Search Angels, find a nephew of the man listed on my birth certificate as my birth father and I'll talk about my search for him in another blog.

My birth mother, however is a different story. I've been searching for more than 20 years for a Margaret Josephine Holliday. I was told that she was from the Utica, NY area, so I found phone numbers on several Hollidays in that area and asked if there was a person by that name in their families. Nope! Search Angles poured through directories in the Rochester, NY area and nothing. She should have shown up on the 1930 census as a child and nothing. I've inquired just about every where one could think of and no one by that name appears anywhere. Now, I know that I had a birth mother, I didn't just drop out of the sky did I?

So now, I'm thinking that maybe my birth mother used an alias - maybe for her last name, or maybe for her first and middle names, or for all three. It's like trying to find a needle in a hay stack as big as Texas. But I'm not giving up, after all I know I didn't just drop out of the sky.