Life-Changing Events

I spent a little time on Ancestry.com this morning. I was searching for further information on my biological grandfather, John Hicks Hodgkins. He was born in December of 1873 or 1874. He was married in 1898 at age 24. I have him in the 1910 and 1920 census records, but couldn't find him in 1930. Finally it occurred to me to search the 1930 records with his wife's name. Bingo! She is listed as a widow.

In the one letter I received from my birthmother, written in the margins of a letter I had written to her, she revealed that she never felt like her very critical mother loved her. She was very close to her father, who worked as a bookkeeper. She lived for Sundays, when she and her father would walk along the nearby beach.

I saw myself in her words. How uncanny that my relationships with my adoptive parents was a mirror of my birthmother's relationships with her her parents. I never felt loved or even accepted by my mother, who raised me to believe I was dumb, ugly and incompetent. I adored my daddy.

I've searched further and cannot find a death record for my grandfather, John. I found a city directory for 1930, so sometime between the publication of that city directory and the visit of the census taker, he died. Gertrude, his beloved daughter, ... (Edit: I found the 1932-33 Gloucester City Directory. He died in June of 1929. His daughter was 16 years old.)

Unmarried, she is resigned to living with her mother, with whom she has no bond, no loving relationship.

Then, ten years later, she is suddenly pregnant. All I know about my birthfather is that he was a pilot or captain (I can't remember which) of a fishing boat in Gloucester, and that he was a pilot with the Civil Air Patrol. I don't know if they had a long term relationship or if it was an affair or a one-night stand. In any event, she's pregnant in 1949 with no family support. Her father's father, Nathaniel, lived with the family, but his wife had died. Her two brothers had moved away—I believe one was already deceased.

Can you even imagine the feeling of aloneness in which she must have been wallowing?

When I think of all that, it's no wonder she gave me up for adoption and, in her words, "blocked you from my mind."

What enormous impact the early death or abandonment of a parent has!