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Re: What do you say? esp for C&U archivists



The patron can also decide to ignore the information...not that I usually
have any reason to be waiting on genealogical researchers, but I once
assisted someone from my non-work-related life in assembling the records
necessary to get her mother a Delayed Birth Registration.  (Her mom was put
up for adoption as an infant, in the 1920's.  She wound up remaining in
foster care until age 18, instead; and none of her social workers were able
to find her birth mother who hadn't filed a birth certificate before leaving
the state.  It took me 5 minutes.  I used a phone book, fer Pete's sake,
looking under the city where the woman was known to have moved.)

Anyway!  The reason the birth mother gave up this particular child, but kept
her several other offspring, was that the little girl was conceived while
the mother's husband was incarcerated.  (Absolutely no doubt about that, and
in the 20's the State Prison certainly had no furlough program.)  So the
child's legal father could not possibly have been the biological father, and
that's undoubtedly why the mother surrendered her baby to State custody and
moved elsewhere.

The family has chosen to ignore the information completely.  They've been
tracking down long-lost cousins ever since, tracing family resemblances that
simply have to be imagined, and having a wonderful time doing it.

While I scratch my head, shake it occasionally, and think:  "It that makes
you happy, it's certainly fine with me."  But when they started "inheriting"
that one-time prisoner's medical problems, it really did make me do a double
take...!


Nina M. Osier, Director
Division of Records Management Services
Maine State Archives
(where my all-time favorite researcher story still must be the patron who
told our then-supervisor in the Search Room, "I've come to look up my
posterior.")

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