Posts by Ann House

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“This is how you get a baby…!”

by Ann House

My brother’s 60th birthday is coming! Most folks remember their siblings being born. But I remember going to get him. Notice that he was here and “available” came through Western Union.  Preparation for his arrival meant I had to give up my cat and my dog, which made me quite sad.  But since I was […]

Erased

by Ann House

She knew her birth mother would say “no” to a reunion. She knew her birth mother was from a small, conservative town in Missouri. She knew her birth mother returned to that town. She knew her birth mother would say “no” because the adoptee is bi-racial. She thought, however, that her birth mother would say […]

The life of a searcher – in remembrance of Sally

by Ann House

Today was a brutal day of searching – my back aches, my neck screams. It was also quite fulfilling when I finally reunited two siblings who never knew the other existed; whose mother had a tumultuous life and kept one, giving the other up for adoption. French Canadian…not much of that here. All this from […]

The Process, the assumptions, and the end results…

by Ann House

I want to spend a little time talking about the process of search. And it is a process. But first and foremost before a search can commence,  there must be searchable information. People come by their information in a variety of ways. Hopefully there is a file that your adoptive parents kept containing documentation; or […]

Faulty memories…

by Ann House

Thanksgiving morning I received an email from an attorney in New Brunswick, Canada requesting help for a 92 year old birth mother. In essence, she stated the woman had given birth here in 1946, had returned to New Brunswick to make a home – leaving the two month old baby with a woman she trusted. […]

Serelda

by Ann House

Sometimes I just can’t find them. It is rare, but sometimes I feel as if I’m trying to search through a gray fog for something just slightly out of my sight on the other side. Usually it is because a name is too common: Elizabeth Chavez, Maria or Mary Martinez, Dorothy Sanchez, Dianne Jones – […]

Unique finds & photographs

by Ann House

A couple of years ago I received an email from a man in England. He stated he was doing genealogy research and had received a copy of his mother’s divorce decree from New Mexico. Imagine his surprise to find that in that decree, a judge had ordered his mother to give up a child she […]

Silver Threads

by Ann House

When Sally File died, her husband asked me to explain “this…” at her funeral. How do I begin. Yes, we are adoptees, birth mothers, siblings. Yes, we have data bases. Yes, we have years of experience. Yes, we know the law, work with the courts… We are searchers. But what does that mean? How is […]

Letters from the Heart

by Ann House

I have them, you know.  Hundreds of them. From years and years of searching, all stuck in a folder. Letters from those who are searching to those sought.  Some are so old they have yellowed, some show the fuzzy edges that only came from a dot matrix printer, others are faded copies of greeting cards, […]