When a birth certificate is more than a birth certificate.
Recently, I undertook the task of researching the family history of someone special. My stepkids’ mom.
My stepkids know very little about their heritage. Theirs is a legacy of absent fathers. My husband’s parents divorced and his father had no voluntary contact with his three children after 1976. My kids’ mom (I’ll call her Claire) has only a name and very little solid information about her father or his family.
That’s where Claire’s birth certificate comes in. She didn’t think it would provide me much to go on. Other than a name, birth state, and age it didn’t appear to offer much information about her birth dad
It did provide that, which was information Claire hadn’t remembered before pulling out her birth certificate. It also, somewhat surprisingly, told us when her mother’s last period was and when her prenatal care began.
But the birth certificate wasn’t done giving up information and telling a tale. The informant on the birth certificate was identified as an aunt, and her address was also provided. It also indicated that Claire’s mother had not reviewed the information for accuracy.
Claire’s mother, at the age of 18, had traveled from upstate New York to North Carolina, with the intention of giving Claire up for adoption. Her aunt was to adopt the child. Claire was born early, at 36 weeks and weighed only 4 lbs 11 oz. After Claire was born, her mother, her grandfather, decided to bring Claire home to
But the birth certificate still wasn’t done.
On first glance, I missed the significance of the fact that Claire’s father’s name is handwritten and not typed. There it was. Box 16 titled “Amended”, down in the bottom corner of the certificate, is where I found the handwritten notation “Order of Filiation” with a date 2 years after Claire’s birth. Order of Filiation, aka Order of Paternity.
What that one notation told us was that this was not just the tale of a single teenage Mom who traveled across the country to give her baby up for adoption and subsequently changed her mind.
Someone went through the effort to file a court proceeding to have Claire’s father’s name added to the birth certificate two years after she was born. That person was likely Claire’s father.
A Google search revealed that only a few states use the term “Filiation”. A few phone calls later and I knew what I needed to do to get the case file.
The brick wall now has a crack. I hope that the request we have made for copies of the Order of Filiation will bear fruit. Updates to follow.
