Law

(For criminal adoptees and fosterees, see Adoptees/Fosterees With Special Problems > Criminal Convictions)

Brooks-Randolph, Angie

Brooks was one of nine children, and her parents were forced by poverty to place her in a foster home where she was brought up by a widowed seamstress. Ambitious to become a lawyer, she ... [more]

Brown, Mick

Brown's birth mother died of TB when he was a baby of seven months and he was informally fostered in Auckland by a white woman and her daughter, in a loving family. He knew his elderly birt... [more]

Carr was born to Elizabeth (Irish-Maori) and Herbert Williams (Welsh), but soon afterwards he was given to his mother's sister and her husband as a tamaiti whangai. His mothers were from an ... [more]

Clinton, William Jefferson

President Clinton's father was killed in a car accident shortly before he was born. His mother remarried in 1950 and he was adopted by his step-father. He was governor of Arkansas, and US ... [more]

Dodson, Michael

Michael Dodson, brother of Patrick , was born in Katherine, Australia. His parents died in 1960 and he was sent to Monivae College, Hamilton, with his brother to be educated. He then stud... [more]

Douglass, Frederick

Douglass was born in Maryland to a slave woman and named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; his father was white - quite possibly his mother's owner (a common practice). As a young child... [more]

Ellison, Edward Pohau

Ellison was descended on both sides from Maori chiefs and also from English whalers and farmers. He was the 11th of 12 children, and was given to his father's cousin Harirota Eyes and her h... [more]

Frelinghuysen, Frederick Theodore

Frelinghuysen, whose father died when he was three, was the birth nephew and adoptive son of Theodore Frelinghuysen, and a member of a long-established political dynasty in New Jersey. H... [more]

Gardiner, Wira

Gardiner is the third of 18 children. After a "juvenile raid" on a department store in Rotorua he was made a ward of court at the age of 10 and put into his grandparents' custody ... [more]

Hale, Matthew

Hale was orphaned by the age of five and fostered by Anthony Kingscote. He had no interest in the law until 1628, when he began to study intensively. He was called to the bar in 1637 and ev... [more]