These sites are also useful if you are searching for the parents of your adopted child, sibling, or other relative. Adoption, when it involves living participants, is a touchy matter. One must consider that the feelings of all those involved should be handled with care and discretion. The Internet provides support at various sites for these problems.
One of the first places on the Web that you may want to go is to one of the many registers where you can post and read others' postings of adoption searches. Registries has an extensive list of these search sites. The number of reunions resulting from these postings is increasing as more people are logging on.
You need to be armed with information for your search. General Adoption Links for the Leve Family Genealogy provides extensive links to information, adoption laws, and support groups. Ellen's Adoption Search and Reunion is also packed with information. For searches in Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom Adoptee Searchers Handbook has good links. Finally, Bastard Nation takes an activist's approach, with some very valuable information.
If you are still hungry for more adoption links, go to the Adoption Ring which will link you, by a WebRing, to over 300 pages of adoption pages. A WebRing is a device that connects sites with a similar topic. You can surf these pages by clicking on the Webring logo on each site.
If your adoption search is farther in the past, it is both easier and harder. The participants are no longer alive, so it is not as sensitive a search. But, because of the distance in time, it is harder to find the information you need.
It is important to get an historical perspective on adoptions in the past. Legends and Legacies: Orphans and Orphanages has informative articles on the history and types of orphanages, and a small list of worldwide orphanages. This site also provides a very valuable how-to article on researching orphanages, and one on tips for writing for the information you need.
Between the years 1853 and 1929, 200,000 children in the United States rode the "Orphan Train" that took them out to rural areas of the country for "placing out." Marilyn Irvin Holt has written an excellent article on these phenomena. The Orphan Trains provides links to online projects concerning these 'orphans'.
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