This tutorial is about adoption. In this case, adoption refers to when a child is raised by someone other than their parents, whether or not their last name was changed or any official adoption process was carried out in the court system. (In many cases, especially going back to the 19th century and before, official court sanctioned adoptions were not nearly as common as simply taking in and raising a child with no legal process or contract.) The adoptive parents could be grandparents, aunt and uncle, other family members, or complete strangers. In some situations this would be referred to as guardianship or fostering rather than adoption.
The point here is to establish a timeline of the child’s life and indicate their relationships. Knowing whose household the child was living in and when they lived there can be a tremendous help in deciphering records regarding the child. Any information you find on relationships and family events should be recorded on your family tree.
How to Record Adoption Genealogy in your Non-Traditional Family Tree
Recording adoption in your genealogy database can include the following steps, depending on the amount of knowledge you have about the adoption, and how much information you wish to record in your family tree:
- Attaching the adopted individual in the database to their biological parents (if known).
- Attaching the adopted individual in the database to their adopted parents.
- Clarifying the relationships between the adopted individual and their two sets of parents.
- Recording the date and place of the adoption.
- Attaching a note to the individual or the adoption event recording any additional information about the adoption.
This tutorial is for adoption info in FamilySearch Family Tree. A future post will show how to follow the same steps in your Ancestry.com tree.
Clarifying Relationship to parents
Our sample child, Harold Potter, was tragically orphaned as an infant. Here is his record on FamilySearch with his birth parents. (Note: Because FamilySearch is a collaborative tree with the goal of providing accurate information, I do not recommend adding fictional characters to FamilySearch. I have added these in the “living” space, which is private, and am deleting them immediately after taking these screenshots. These are for teaching purposes only. If you want to experiment with FamilySearch features without worrying about messing up the tree, go to beta.familysearch.org. It is an exact copy of FamilySearch that is used for testing features. Changes you make there will not affect the real tree.)
To clarify that his relationship to these parents is biological, click on the pencil button next to Harold’s name to edit his relationship with his parents.
Then click on “Add Relationship Type” and select “Biological” from the dropdown list. You can do the same thing with the adopted parents once you add them. Just choose “Adopted” from the list instead of “Biological.” When you change the relationship type to “Adopted,” ensure that you input an adoption date.
Adding an Additional Set of Parents
To add Harold’s adopted parents, click the “Add Parent” button above his father.
In the “Add Parent” dialog, type in the information you have on the adoptive father or mother. When you click “Next,” the Family Tree database will be searched to see if this person is already in the database. If they are not already in the database, click the “Add New” button to create a new person. If the adoptive parent is already in the database and you know their Family Tree ID number (for example, LBTK-TSM for James Potter, above), you can click on “Find by ID Number” and type the ID number into the search box. This is especially usefully if a relative already in your tree adopted the child.
The quickest way to add the second parent is to click on “Add or Find Spouse” to add their spouse.
If you use the “Add Parent” dialog again, it will add the individual within a third set of parents for the child instead of including them with their spouse. This is easy to fix. Just click “Add or Find Spouse” and “Find by ID Number” and type in the ID of the spouse you added. Then delete the relationship with the extra set of parents by clicking on the pencil next to the child’s name under the relationship you are wanting to delete. Next, click the “delete relationship” button.
“Preferred” Parents
FamilySearch has a box you can check to indicate which set of parents is “preferred.” These parents will appear by default in the Tree View and in Family Group Sheets. You can change the preferred parents at any time. The parents will appear on the list in order of their marriage date. Because of this, setting them as preferred will not put them higher on the list. For more information on this feature, see this FamilySearch Help Article.
Adding an Adoption Event
Information about the adoption or any adoption-related events can be added as a “Custom Event.” These events appear under the “Other Information” heading, between the basic life events and the family members.
Also, as mentioned above, when you change the relationship with the parents to “Adopted,” you will be asked to input the adoption date.
Adding a Note
Lastly, you can add a note to clarify information about the adoption. Just click on “Add a New Note” at the bottom of the page.
I hope this is helpful to some of you who are trying to piece your family trees together. Leave a comment if you have any questions.
For more fun Harry Potter-related genealogy, see this article by Family Tree Magazine.
More tutorials for non-traditional family trees:
- Non-Traditional Family Trees: Adoption in Ancestry
- Non-traditional Family Trees Tutorial: Step Families in FamilySearch and Ancestry
- Non-traditional Family Trees Tutorial: Non-married Partnerships (Coming Soon)
- Non-traditional Family Trees: Homosexual Relationships
For more tips and resources for talking to your children about your non-traditional family tree, see this excellent post by Emily Kowalski Schroeder on Growing Little Leaves: Family Trees for EVERY Family