Daily AncestorAdopted child
An adopted child is someone taken into a family as its own child; after Massachusetts' 1851 law, adoption was usually made legal by a court.
Webster's 1828 dictionary defines adopted as taken as one's own, received as son and heir. Before formal laws, children were often taken in informally, with no court paper at all.
Massachusetts passed the first modern adoption law in 1851, requiring a judge to find the adoption fit and proper. Other states followed. Many adoption records were later sealed, so if a census shows an adopted son, the court file may be closed to the public.
As seen in a recordRelationship column of the 1910 census
Elwood Tannehill | Adopted Son | S | 11
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Adopted child." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/relationships/adopted-child. Last checked 2026-10-12.