Parents Married (or Partnered) to Each Other

Antonius Pius (under Roman Empire)

Ancient Roman society institutionalized the adoption of adults. It was relatively common for a wealthy Roman couple to adopt an adult man, even a slave, as heir if they did not have any son... [more]

Augustus Caesar Octavius (under Roman Empire)

Ancient Roman society institutionalized the adoption of adults. It was relatively common for a wealthy Roman couple to adopt an adult man, even a slave, as heir if they did not have any son... [more]

Bálint, Lea

Balint spent part of World War II living under an assumed name in a Polish convent in Brwinow, near Warsaw. Her parents placed her there when she was five and she emerged at the end of the ... [more]

Best, James

Best was born Jules Guy in Powderly, Kentucky, to a poor coal mining family with six children. When he was three poverty forced the family to place him in an orphanage, but he was adopted t... [more]

Bijani, Laden & Laleh

Laden and Laleh Bijani were born joined at the head, to a poor farming family in Shiraz, Iran. The family had 11 children and were unable to care for them. They remained in hospital for som... [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]

Charbonneau, Jean Baptiste

Charbonneau was the son of a French-Canadian guide and his wife, the famous Sacagawea , both hired as interpreters for the Lewis and Clark expedition to the American West, and was born at ... [more]

Chesterfield, Philip Stanhope

Stanhope was the distant cousin and godson of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), the author of Letters to His Son (1774) and Letters to His Godson (1790). When... [more]

Childebert II

Childebert was the son of King Sigibert I and Brunhilde. In the chaos of sixth-century France, Sigibert and his brothers, Gontran (Guntram), king of Burgundy, and Chilpéric, king of Soisson... [more]

Chinese Qing Dynasty

For nearly 200 years the Qing dynasty practiced a form of adoption to secure orderly succession to the throne when the emperor was childless. It was instituted by the Yong Zheng Empero... [more]