Since I had the real names of both birth parents for the man who wants to know of his heritage on his birth mother's side, the first thing I did was check the census records. I found the father and his family on them right away. One could easily go back four generations or more using those. Since the focus is on his birth mother's line I wouldn't have bothered with his father's side except that there was a possibility of bigamy.
I found only one marriage attributed to the birth father, the marriage he stayed in for a lifetime. He was clearly married when he had the affair that brought a son into this world. I do not think there was any marriage or divorce of this man's birth parents and therefore no bigamy as I've found no evidence of it.
Knowing that World War II was brewing, I wondered if the birth father had enlisted. Oddly, I did not find any enlistment or draft records (such as the sign up) for him. Marriage would not have been reason enough to avoid either. Perhaps there was some other reason why not. I'm going to go into more locally held resources than rely on databases. (Update August 13th, 2019 - I did find his military record for WWII on the database called FOLD3.)
I was able to confirm that the birth mother was indeed an orphan from a young age by finding her on both the 1930 and 1940 census in the Catholic orphanage of a large mid-western city. The name of the institution was there on the census, and I was able to find a history of that place and the children they took in. Since the family was Catholic and near a large city, the story goes that her widowed father took her there and that he visited for a while until he died. We knew that she had probably lived there her entire life and no one had adopted her.
The history site that included historical information on the orphanage warned that there was limited information available for genealogical purposes. We may still contact them just to see what they might have. Of course, we would love to know exactly when she was placed there, possibly as an infant, and who signed her in, who took her there, and if they have any notes about visits.
I asked the man if he had his mother's death certificate or birth certificate. He said he did but then got back to me and said he did not. We could get a copy of her death record and her burial record. And I feel this will be essential. As for her birth certificate, that's possible too. But first I checked to see if an index of birth records for her state and county and the year she was born were available online. They were (though I don't know how comprehensive they are since few people were coming up for her birth year) BUT SHE DID NOT COME UP ON THEM. (If she was born outside a hospital such as at home with a midwife the birth might not have been registered civilly.)
As always, there is a possibility that records were lost, or that we are encountering misspellings in handwritten or errors on database information. Since she was NOT ADOPTED I don't think we're dealing with a new birth certificate being made for her as happens during legal adoptions. (Birth certificates should be called PARENTAGE certificates as after adoption a new number is given and the new parents names are recorded on it.)
I find it odd that she is not on the birth index for the time and place where she was born. I think we should have the Catholic Diocese archive look for her baptism.
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This post has been slightly edited for more clarity on August 14, 2019
