How can I find the birth-parents of my adopted great-grandmother Anna?

Question

My great-grandmother Anna was supposedly adopted.

How can I access the record of her birth or find more information about her birth-parents?

Born in Portland Oregon 6 May 1886, adopted by the Bochman family.

mtDNA matches are in Norway and Sweden.

Thank you very much for any assistance!

Comments

Keith, if the parents currently listed on her profile were her adoptive parents, you should mark them as non-biological, right?

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You are probably right Jillaine... the only issue for now being the "supposedly" adopted status.  The records I do have show her parents as those listed and I have nothing to the contrary other than my mother saying that her grandmother was adopted.  If she didn't say that I would have no clue.  And my dear mum could possibly be wrong :)

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You got me curious and I went digging. Added some sources.

Very strange set of records about the parents.

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My only evidence for adoption is my mother saying it was so.

Thank you for investigating.  I've been at a loss.

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It's not parents, but the brothers currently showing on her profile are from an entirely different era (and born earlier than their parents).

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Sorry Ellen, I don't know what I was thinking when creating those profiles 3 years ago... it was just after I joined.  One of the brothers was actually the son of the other brother, and I'm not positive at the moment why he is connected to his parents.  I fixed some of the dates and am improving them.  

A "duh" moment for me :)

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I think there is some evidence to support Charles being son of Frederick.  Charles had a son Kenneth. There is a passenger list where Kenneth is called grandson of Frederick. And we know from the 1900 and 1910 census records that Fredrick'a wife has two births both of which were living both those census years.  Charles and Anna?

What's odd is the 10-year gap between Charles 1876 birth and Anna's 1886 birth.

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The other very odd thing is the 1874/5 marriage in Hull, England of a Danish/Norway couple the groom of which emigrated to US prior to that and who end up in Oregon. It would have been very rare for such a travel pattern at that time.

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I'm wondering if I must break down and pay for this record and if it would contain any more information:

http://genealogy.state.or.us/detail.php?id=569295

Record #	569258
Case #
Name	BOCKMAN, ANNA FREDERICA
Parents	BOCKMAN, FREDERICK & ANNA (JORSTAD)
Date	05/06/1886
Record Type	Portland Births
County	no county
Source	City of Portland

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If it were my ancestress I definitely would.

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Keith, Charles had a large family. Have you worked his descendants? I don't know enough about DNA but it would be interesting to compare the DNA results of his descendants with your DNA results to see if there's sufficient relatedness. Can that be done when one sibling is a female and the other male?

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A descendant of Charles who is in the same generation as Keith would be a 3rd cousin. A third cousin should have a good DNA match (predicted match is 53 cM; Blaine Bettinger's data indicate an average match of 75 cM). However, at that degree of relatedness, you can't reliably correlate DNA matches to degree of relationship. For example, the difference between a 3rd cousin and half-3rd cousin (predicted 27 cM, average 49 cM) is too small to be distinguished solely based on DNA.

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Just butting in here to say that this migration route is the route that my Latter Day Saints ancestors (and hundreds of  others, at least) traveled from Scandinavia to the United States, except for the Oregon part. Copenhagen to Hull, then by train from Hull to Liverpool, then from Liverpool to New Orleans, then upriver by steamboat to St. Louis.

Answer 1

Keith, I see you have taken a Family Finder autosomal test. If you have not already done so I would recommend you also take autosomal tests at Ancestry and 23andme to extend the pool you are fishing in.

Tools such as DNAGedcom and GenomeMatePro are useful in trying to map segments and identify which matches would fit with the lines you are seaching for. You can gradually piece together the puzzle of what makes up your DNA and narrow down the possibilities for these unknown great great grandparents.

Comments

Thank you Lynda!

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It would sure be helpful and less expensive for all if everyone uploaded to GEDmatch :)

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It would yes, but since they don't it helps to test at the other companies too if you have the objective of finding a particular ancestor. I am trying to identify parents of two of my great grandfathers and am finding Ancestry is giving me far more leads than FTDNA and 23andme. Downside of Ancestry is that you need to use 3rd party tools to analyse match lists efficiently and upload to either gedmatch or FTDNA to get access to a chromosome browser.

Answer 2

I drop the 1 to many report on GedMatch to excel where I can add columns with notes...  it helps me keep who I have contacted and the results in an understandable format.  

I keep running into people who tested but either have no trees or trees that go back 2 generations where mine go back 15 or more.  So it can be frustrating waiting for someone to catch up with you...  

I have also run into at least 4 people who have adoption issues and am trying to hep them figure out who that might be out of my tree.  But they have so little information it is like a needle in a haystack.  I have run the reports to see who we have in common, I have run the one to one and done everything I can think of but often the lack of info on the other end is tough.  DNA is not as simple as oh, I got these matches.... these are my cousins...  many are not...