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 your Ancestry.com tree. Another post covers these steps in the FamilySearch Family Tree.
Attaching Multiple Sets of Parents
Our sample child, Harold Potter, was tragically orphaned as an infant. I have created a tree in Ancestry with him and his birth parents.
It is not obvious at first how to add multiple sets of parents in Ancestry. If you click “Add” you can choose to add spouses, children, or siblings, but not parents. To add parents, instead you must click on the button in the top right corner labeled “Edit,” then select “Edit Relationships” from the menu.
This will bring up a dialog where you can add an alternate father and/or an alternate mother. Here I am adding the names of Harold’s aunt and uncle, who adopted him. Since I have not yet added them to my tree, I click on “Add New Person” instead of typing in the “Find a person” box. Then I enter in the name of Harold’s adoptive father, and any vital information I know about him.
Now there are two fathers and two mothers in the “Edit Relationships” dialog.
Clarifying Relationships
Now I want to clarify which parents are biological, and which are adopted. You can see I have several options in the dropdown menu to choose from: Biological, Adopted, Step, Foster, Related, Guardian, Private, and Unknown.
In this case, “adopted” fits best, since he lived in his aunt and uncle’s house and they paid for his food and other necessities of care from the time his parents died until he came of age, when he was not living at school. They were not considered “foster parents,” which would be understood as more of a temporary arrangement. “Guardianship” is something I would only use to refer to someone who has legal guardian status over a minor’s property or legal rights until they come of age, not someone who takes the child into their home and raises them.
Setting Preferred Parents
When I add multiple sets of parents, only one set of parents will show up in the main profile view. The other parents will be hidden. However, if you select “Set as preferred,” it will change the parents who show up in the main profile view. I am going to select “Set as preferred” for Vernon and Petunia to show you what happens in the main profile view:
I can always go back to “Edit Relationships” and change the preferred parents. In this case I will change it back to James and Lily. I can easily find the Dursleys if I need to since I have connected Petunia to Lily, her sister, in my tree.
Adding an Adoption Event
To add more details about the adoption, click on the “Add” button next to “Facts.” You will see a dropdown list with many types of facts. Select “Adoption.”
The form asks for a date, location and description of the adoption event. Type in any information you have. I like to include a brief explanation of where the information came from in the “Description” field. Type in the information and click “Add.” The event will now appear on Harold’s timeline of facts.
If you want to add any other information about the adoption, you can click on “View Notes” or “View Comments” to pull up the Notes or Comments panel and type into it. Notes are private – only you and other editors of your tree can see them. Comments are visible to anyone who can view your tree.
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 Tutorial: Adoption in FamilySearch
- Non-traditional Family Trees Tutorial: Step Families in FamilySearch and Ancestry
- Non-traditional Family Trees: Homosexual Relationships
- Non-traditional Family Trees Tutorial: Non-married Partnerships (Coming Soon)
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