George Gordon was the grandson of the 3rd Earl of Aberdeen. His mother died in 1791 and his father in 1795, leaving him in the care of two guardians: William Pitt the Younger (the ... [more]
Alda (her stage name) was born Fanny Jane Davis in New Zealand. Her parents divorced when she was 15 months old, and her mother, a professional singer, died in 1884, after which young Fanny... [more]
Audubon was born in what is now Haiti, the son of a well-to-do married French naval captain and slave trader and his Creole servant-mistress. His mother died soon after his birth and his fa... [more]
Ballinger was orphaned as a child and left school at 14. He got a job as an assistant in the Cardiff Public Library in 1875 and rose to be chief librarian by 1885. In 1908 he became the fir... [more]
Devadasi (mainly of Maharashtra and Karnataka states) and related practices ( Maharis in Kerala, Natis in Assam, Muralis in Maharashtra, Bogams in Andhra Pradesh, Jogatis and Basa... [more]
It is not unusual for adults to be adopted as honorary members of a family, clan or tribe. There are two main types. One is the publicity-stunt adoption of politicians, usually western l... [more]
The Pacific island country of Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands) includes the atoll of Abemama, inhabited by the tribe of Abemama, Kuria and Aranuka. The hereditary high chiefs of thes... [more]
Bayard and his siblings were adopted by their uncle, John Bubenheim Bayard, when their father died. From 1797 to 1803 he was a member of the US House of Representatives from Delaware, fr... [more]
Bemo, born Talamasmico in or before 1825, was the nephew of the great Seminole Chief Osceola. When he was nine or 10 (in 1835) his father died after a drunken brawl in St. Augustine, Florid... [more]
Until the 19th century what is now India (like Europe) was a patchwork of over 650 princely states, like kingdoms, ranging from the small and relatively unimportant, to the large, immensely... [more]