I am trying to complete the profile of my great-grandmother but have a huge number of gaps. She was adopted in 1911(baptism record) in Jo-burg (assumed based on her parent's marriage). I believe she was named by her adoptive parents as one of her father's sisters has the same first name.
In addition to trying to complete the profile with all relevant information, I am wondering if I can get any insight into who her birth parents might have been. My mother's DNA results suggest a reasonably high likelihood that one of Winifred's parents was hispanic because I have sourced the other family lines and find no hispanic heritage.
So - my actual questions:
- How can I start to track down her birth parents? I have identified what I believe is a reasonably complete list of homes/orphanages in Transvaal around that time from a Transvaal Indigency commission/review in 1905. Before I start trying to contact these organisations, I wanted to check if this is even a recommended course of action?
- I need some help transcribing and translating few words in her marriage certificate, specifically her marriage status. I have figured out that her husband's is "widower" but I can't even deciper the handwriting for her status to begin to translate it.
I am quite new to wiki tree and this profile is still a massive work in progress. I have included a load of my research notes (for her and her family) and I am trying to methodically turn these into bio with source references attached - so I apologise in advance for the current state of it.
