17-21st

"'They've been saying this city's sinking since I was a boy, it ain't going anywhere.'""- Marcel Gerard about New Orleans"

1694

 * After an unknown woman accused Rebekah of witchcraft, Klaus subsequently turned her husband and compelled him to drain her dry.

1702

 * Mikael tracked his children to where they had settled in Cádiz, Spain. After he killed Klaus' horse, Theo, stuck the horse's head on a pike in the town square, and burned down half the city, Elijah and Klaus left Cadiz on horseback to find Kol and tell him they were going to leave the country.
 * When Kol refused to flee with them, Klaus and Elijah daggered him, put him in his coffin, and joined Rebekah and the still-daggered Finn on a ship bound for the New World. Kol would not be reawakened for over a century.

Between 1702-1718

 * Klaus, Rebekah and Elijah, along with the daggered Kol and Finn arrived at the port in the newly-christened penal colony known as New Orleans, Louisiana in the New World.

1718

 * Klaus and his siblings began to help to build the city of New Orleans.

1745

 * In order to acquire a piece of land owned by a simple farmer, Niklaus turned and compelled him to burn his entire village to the ground.

1790

 * Céleste Dubois was born to unknown parents in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1810

 * Marcel Gerard was born to the then-Governor of New Orleans and one of his slaves. Marcel's mother elected not to name him until he turned ten years old to ensure that he would survive the influenza outbreak that had spread through the area. However, Marcel's mother ended up dying from the fever herself before he reached that age.

1820

 * Elijah, Klaus, and Rebekah were residing at the Governor of Louisiana's mansion as part of a deal they made. As per their arrangement, the Mikaelson siblings would be given a residence and their feeding habits would be overlooked by the city's leaders in exchange for the three paying him off with large sums of gold.
 * Rebekah, who was in a long-term relationship with the Governor's eldest son Emil, became so enamored with him that she asked Klaus and Elijah for permission to turn him so that they could live together forever. However, Elijah rejected this proposal on the grounds that turning the Governor's "only son" (though the Governor actually did have a second, though illegitimate, son in Marcel) would make him an enemy and would thus cause the family too much trouble. When Klaus made a rude comment about Rebekah wanting to turn every single person with whom she had ever fell in love, Emil became so offended on her behalf that he attempted to fight him for Rebekah's honor. Because Emil was only a human, this fight ultimately ended in Emil's death at Klaus' hands after Klaus tossed him over the balcony at the party.
 * Days later, at Emil's funeral, Klaus saw young Marcel, who had been caught eating an apple from the plantation's apple trees and was whipped by one of the slave masters as punishment. Klaus was so impressed to see Marcel fight back against the man that he saved Marcel from more harm by killing the slave master where he stood. Having realized that the two were kindred spirits due to Marcel also being a "bastard son" of a wealthy landowner, Klaus decided to adopt the boy into the Mikaelson family as his ward. When he learned the child did not have a name, he suggested the name "Marcellus," since it's meaning, "little warrior," seemed to fit his personality.

1821

 * Elijah began to take Klaus' young ward, Marcellus Gerard, under his wing and began schooling him in literature, music, and art. During Elijah's time as his tutor, the two became very close, and Marcel began to look up to Elijah as a mentor, even saying that he wanted to play piano as well as he does.
 * Klaus, jealous of Elijah's budding friendship with Marcel, decided he needed someone with whom he could have some fun, so he undaggered Kol for the first time since 1702 and went on a feeding frenzy with him, during which the two brothers killed at least sixty residents of a tenement building.
 * Only days afterward, Klaus daggered Kol again after Kol proved to be a bad influence on Marcel by slaughtering several compelled humans in front of the young boy and feeding him his blood in preparation to turn him into a vampire, despite the fact that the boy was only eleven years old at this time. Kol would not be undaggered again for almost a century.
 * On Marcel's eleventh birthday, Klaus gifted him with the Starling Necklace that his mother Esther had given him as a child, not knowing that she had placed a spell on it to cause physical weakness in the wearer.
 * After Klaus falsely accused the New Orleans witches of killing locals in order to fuel their dark magic with the intention of covering up his own murders, Elijah's lover Céleste Dubois was drowned to death in her bathtub by the townsfolk as punishment. However, unbeknownst to anyone, Céleste used her magic to live on for the next two centuries by taking over the bodies of young female witches in the French Quarter Coven using spirit possession spells.

1835

 * Klaus daggered Rebekah when she went against his orders and attempted to pursue a relationship with Marcel.
 * Klaus gave Marcel the choice of either undaggering Rebekah and living out the rest of his human life with her, or being turned into a vampire by him. Marcel chose the latter, which resulted in Rebekah remaining daggered for the next 52 years.

1864

 * Lucette Moreau is born in France.

1887

 * Klaus undaggered Rebekah after 52 years of desiccation.
 * Rebekah then learned that while she was daggered, Klaus gave Marcel a choice between undaggering her and spending the rest of his human life with her, or being turned into a vampire, and that he chose the latter. Rebekah was so infuriated by Marcel's betrayal that she spent the next several decades, holding a grudge against him.
 * After being reawakened, Elijah took Rebekah to the city's opera theatre to celebrate her reintroduction into New Orleans society.
 * Lucette Moreau marries the man who will become Noelle and her sisters’ father in England.

1888

 * Nathalie Moreau is born in England

1889

 * Nicolette Moreau is born in England

1890

 * Noelle’s father leaves after finding out that Lucette is pregnant again
 * Lucette Moreau moves her and her daughters to New Orleans

1891

 * After becoming enraged over a lady's coughing all night due to pneumonia, Klaus turned both her and her daughter into vampires, however made the daughter watch as he burned her mother alive.
 * January 15: Noelle Moreau is born in New Orleans to Lucette Moreau and an unnamed man.

1901

 * Klaus undaggered Kol after eighty years of desiccation.

1903

 * In that year, Aurora de Martel and Lucien Castle, were in Paris on a vacation.

1910

 * Noelle Moreau meets Kol Mikaelson at a Mikaelson gala in New Orleans.
 * A few weeks later, Noelle and Kol officially become lovers.

1911

 * Noelle is disowned by her family and the French Quarter Witches and moves into the Mikaelson Compound with Kol and his family.

1913

 * Kol and Noelle discuss running away together and getting married

1914

 * A supernatural war began to brew in New Orleans. The witch community split into two factions: those who sided with Niklaus Mikaelson, and those who sided with Kol Mikaelson.
 * In this war against his brother, Kol sought help from the witches Noelle Moreau, Astrid Malchance and Mary-Alice Claire in order to create a multitude of dark objects using the Arabian form of dark magic known as Kemiya, since his vampirism prevented him from performing the magic he needed himself. The dark objects they created include the Devil's Star, the Rosary of Madness, the cursed shackles, and the Bracelet of Obedience, all of which were meant to be used as magical practice to prepare the witches for their final spell, which would allow them to create a version of the silver daggers that would successfully neutralize his brother Klaus.


 * December:
 * Kol went to St. Anne's Church and attacked the Dowager Fauline with the Devil's Star after he had learned that she possessed an extremely large and perfect paragon diamond which Mary-Alice and Astrid could use to fuel the spell to create their mystical dagger. Once she was dead, Kol went on to kill the rest of the parishioners who were attending mass that evening to be on the safe side.
 * A short time later, Kol, Astrid, and Mary-Alice broke into the Dowager Fauline's cottage to steal the paragon diamond for their own ends after Mary-Alice cast a boundary spell on the property to prevent anyone from coming in after them. However, as soon as Kol left the house with the diamond in hand, he was confronted by Klaus and Marcel, who had been tipped off about Kol's plans and who then forced him to give them the diamond, although they had no idea why Kol wanted or needed it. Klaus also enlisted the help of one of his witches, who turned the boundary spell Mary-Alice cast against her, which then trapped Mary-Alice and Astrid in the home for the rest of their lives.
 * Because of this powerful boundary spell, the New Orleans covens began using the home as an asylum and prison for their fellow witches who had either broken the coven's rules or who were driven to insanity by witchcraft, as the boundary spell Klaus' ally had cast ensured that no one would be able to escape the home once they were inside.
 * Freya Mikaelson met her younger siblings for the first time at the Mikaelson family Christmas party, though they did not know who she was; in fact, although Rebekah did recognize her as a witch, she mistook her for being Marcel's date to the party.
 * At some point in the evening, Rebekah outed Kol's plans to make the dagger to Klaus with the French Quarter witches. Afterward, Klaus made a toast to his sister for her loyalty before he and Elijah cornered Kol on the balcony and daggered him once more in front of the entire party. Kol would once again remain daggered for almost ninety years.
 * A few hours later, Klaus tracks down Noelle, who fled the party, feeds her his blood, then snaps her neck.
 * The next day, Marcel finds Noelle and keeps her safe in a secure location until the Mikaelson’s departure in 1919
 * An unknown amount of time after the Mikaelson family Christmas party, Freya (and presumably Dahlia as well) once again fell into their century-long sleep as a condition of their immortality and invulnerability. Either before or after they entered their slumber, Freya ended up inside the Fauline cottage (though how or why she ended up there is still unknown), where her unconscious body was eventually placed in a glass coffin and locked inside the cottages attic. She then remained there for the duration of her sleep, during which time the cottage became known as a makeshift asylum for the criminal and/or mentally unstable witches of the New Orleans covens.

1915

 * Nathalie gets married to an unnamed witch

1916

 * Marcel, tired of being controlled by Klaus and trying to get over Rebekah, decided to enlist in the United States Army to fight in World War I. He was then assigned to the 369th Regiment, also known as the "Harlem Hell Fighters" or the "Brotherhood of the Damned," and was deployed to Séchault, France shortly afterward despite Klaus' protests that he stay at home where he belonged.

1917

 * Nicolette gets married to an unnamed Claire witch

1918

 * Marcel continued to fight in Séchault, France during World War I, where he had attained the rank of Corporal following the death of his predecessor, as the Harlem Hell Fighters admired his dedication to their work in maintaining the line. However, their regiment was apparently not a priority when it came to Army headquarters, and they became low on most supplies, such as food and ammunition. They were also not given gas masks, despite the fact that they knew the German military has poisonous gas that they were using against their enemies.
 * Klaus tracked Marcel down to the trench where his regiment was fighting in France and summoned his adopted son to their regional headquarters in order to try to convince him to come back to the United States. However, Marcel refused to abandon his men and even rejected his gift of women to feed on despite the fact that he had been starving for weeks.
 * Marcel returned to battle after his reunion with Klaus to find that his fellow soldiers had been exposed to mustard gas while he was gone and were unable to fight the effects without gas masks. Many of the men were already dead, but Joe Dalton and around a dozen others were still alive, though they were fading fast. When Marcel apologized to them and lamented that he had failed them, Joe insisted that he wouldn't be failing them if he turned them into vampires and gave them a fighting chance at survival. Though he was initially torn, not wanting to condemn them to a live of vampirism, he ultimately agreed to Joe's request and sired all the survivors. When they awoke in transition, Marcel led the men over the trenches and onto the battlefields, where they fed on the German soldiers and completed their transformation into vampires, continuing their reputation of maintaining their line when all of the others failed.
 * July: Leo Grimm is born in California to Jeanine and Joseph Grimm.

1919

 * Marcel returned to New Orleans after World War I ended and reunited with Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah at the compound, where they were throwing him a welcome home party. However, Rebekah, still angry with Marcel for choosing vampirism over their relationship in the 1800s, remained cold to him despite his attempts to talk to her.
 * Papa Tunde, a witch who practiced both ancestral and sacrificial magic, arrived to New Orleans and became the leader of the French Quarter Coven. Papa Tunde promised to help the coven vanquish their enemies, and in doing so, killed any human, witch, werewolf, and vampire who opposed his rule and used their deaths to fuel his sacrificial magic. Locals who were killed by Tunde during this time included Mayor O'Connell and many members of the Guerrera werewolf crime family.
 * Elijah and Klaus attempted to form an alliance with the Guerrera family by making the following deal, which would benefit both sides in the face of the recent passage of Prohibition in the United States: the brothers would allow the Guerreras access to the ports they controlled so the mobsters could smuggle alcohol, which was now illegal following the passage of Prohibition, into the city; in doing so, the brothers would make the Guerreras the public face of the ports while Elijah and Klaus, who were trying to remain inconspicuous to avoid Mikael being drawn to their new home, secretly remained in charge and would make the important business decisions.
 * Klaus, knowing Papa Tunde posed a threat to their lifestyle in New Orleans, studied the witch for weeks to learn his weaknesses before making his first move. When he learned that the bulk of Tunde's power came from the fact that he was channeling the magical power of his twin sons, Klaus killed the young boys before taking advantage of Tunde's weakness and killing him by gouging out his eyes with his thumbs.
 * After Tunde's death, Marcel admitted to Rebekah that he was the one who brought the powerful witch to New Orleans, in hopes that he would chase Klaus away from the city, allowing him and Rebekah to finally be together as they always wanted. When Rebekah informed him that Klaus had dealt with a hundred Tundes in his life, they realized that there was one person who Klaus feared enough to flee town to escape from him-- their father, Mikael, the oldest Original vampire and vampire hunter who had been chasing them all for centuries. Rebekah and Marcel then decided to seek the help of a witch to summon Mikael to New Orleans.
 * Rebekah befriended a fellow nurse named Genevieve who worked with her at the Fleur-de-Lis Sanatorium with her and who also happened to be a powerful witch of the French Quarter Coven. Initially, Rebekah only got close to her in order to use her to summon Mikael to New Orleans and chase Klaus away so that she and Marcel could finally have a chance at happiness without his interference; however, Rebekah unintentionally grew fond of Genevieve and started to have second thoughts about taking advantage of her kindness and friendship.
 * Eventually, Rebekah and Marcel decided to go forward with their plans and instructed Genevieve to send Mikael a magical message to summon him to New Orleans, leading Genevieve to believe that she would be reuniting their family after many years apart.
 * After Tunde was defeated, Klaus and Elijah were finally able to successfully unite all of the human and supernatural factions in New Orleans to fight Prohibition.
 * Thrilled to finally have achieved peace between the humans and supernatural beings, Klaus decided to finally give Marcel and Rebekah his blessing to be together after all these years, not knowing that the two had betrayed him by summoning Mikael to town with Genevieve's help. However, since it had been six months since they had sent the message, Rebekah and Marcel hoped that perhaps Mikael hadn't received the message, as they didn't want to ruin their relationships with Klaus now that they were finally happy as a family. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to any of them, Mikael had returned to town that day and was surreptitiously watching them to learn more about his children's lives in New Orleans.
 * Worried about Klaus finding out about their betrayal, Rebekah confronted Genevieve and demanded that she rescind Mikael's summons to New Orleans, but Genevieve insisted that the spell didn't work that way, and that it was now impossible to take back. Rebekah's anger ultimately led Genevieve to realize that the Original vampire had used her and vowed to tell Klaus in hopes that he would show them all mercy. To prevent her from exposing her to Klaus, Rebekah forced a bloody handkerchief of one of their influenza patients into Genevieve's face, infecting her with the disease and essentially sentencing her to death. Clara Summerlin (who was being possessed by Céleste Dubois) walked in just as Rebekah had done this, forcing her to infect Clara as well to keep her secret safe. She then compelled several orderlies to keep them isolated in quarantine for the duration of their illness, which is where both women ultimately died.
 * However, while Genevieve's remains were consecrated to the earth and her spirit sent to join the Ancestors within the Ancestral Plane, Céleste continued to use dark magic to gain a form of immortality by using spirit possession spells to inhabit the bodies of young French Quarter witches, a cycle she repeated dozens of times over the next century.
 * The same day of his arrival, Mikael confronted Elijah at the compound. When Elijah refused to help Mikael kill Klaus, Mikael staked him with a regular wooden stake, temporarily neutralizing him to buy him time to attack Klaus without interference.
 * Afterward, Mikael tracked Klaus to the opera house, where he proceeded to compel the entire audience to stay seated and laugh at the show he had put together to further torture Klaus. He also killed and mutilated several werewolves and vampires, including Klaus' lover Lana, and he seriously wounded Marcel as well before setting their bodies up in grotesque poses on the stage. After another physical fight with his three children, Mikael burned down the New Orleans Opera House and everyone inside it, though Elijah, Klaus, and Rebekah managed to escape mostly unharmed.
 * Klaus and Rebekah ultimately fled New Orleans to seek safety elsewhere, while Elijah stayed behind to delay Mikael. By this point, all of the Mikaelson siblings believed Marcel to be dead, not knowing that he had actually survived his injuries and escaped before he could be burned in the opera house fire.
 * At some point after this confrontation with his father, Elijah left New Orleans as well, though, for unknown reasons, he set off on his own journey while Rebekah and Klaus stayed together during their travels. Elijah eventually came to believe that Klaus had daggered Rebekah and scattered the bodies of their siblings across the seas, and as far as it is known, the two didn't reunite again until 2010, the night that Klaus finally broke his hybrid curse.
 * After the Mikaelsons fled town, Marcel began working to gain control over New Orleans by choosing suitable humans to turn into vampires and amassing an army to give him more power. He also hoped that Rebekah would return for him, but when she didn't (because she thought he had been killed) he converted the foundation of the house he had planned on building for them to live together into a prison for vampires who betrayed them that became known as the Garden.
 * March 4:
 * The New Orleans witches celebrated Fête de Cadeau. as they did every year. It was also on this day that the infamous serial killer known as the Axeman decided to write a letter to the Times Picayune newspaper that stated his gift to the city was a night where he wouldn't kill anyone, though he would only do this if everyone in the city threw a party at their houses and played jazz music as loud as they could. If they didn't, he said he would kill thousands of citizens. However, New Orleans did as they were asked, and the Axeman stayed true to his word by not killing anyone.

1922

 * At some point this year, Klaus and Rebekah settled in Chicago, Illinois after spending three years on the run following Mikael's massacre in New Orleans.
 * Stefan met Klaus and Rebekah for the first time at Gloria's speakeasy in Chicago, where the owner, a witch named Gloria, sang jazz music. The three then spent much of their time together at this speakeasy, where they would feed on the patrons and often compel them embarrass themselves for their own amusement. Stefan also began a romantic relationship with Rebekah, and the two began to care for each other a great deal.
 * Mikael, still seeking out his children so he could kill them, began working with the Chicago Police Department as the Chief of Police in order to use their resources to help him out. He and the officers under his command raided Gloria's bar one night by shooting wooden bullets at the patrons. Upon realizing that Mikael was with the police and had outed them as vampires, Klaus and Rebekah once again fled the city to get away from him, but not before Klaus compelled Stefan to forget he had ever known them until he told him otherwise. However, when Rebekah informed Klaus that she would rather stay behind with Stefan if Klaus wouldn't allow him to come with them, Klaus daggered her and brought her body with him in her coffin. She would then remain in this state for 88 years.

1925

 * Marcel and his vampire army, which included Joe Dalton, the Army soldier he turned while fighting in World War I, launched a guerrilla attack against the Guerrera werewolf pack, killing all of its approximately one hundred members over the course of four days and leaving only one survivor: Gabriel Guerrera, who was only a baby at the time of his family's deaths. Gabriel was then adopted by another family in New Orleans and was renamed Gabriel Correa.
 * Gabriel would later continue the Guerrera family's bloodline and presumably passed on the knowledge of their family's werewolf heritage to his descendants, though the subsequent generations of Guerreras/Correas were all very careful not to trigger their werewolf curses in order to maintain their covers as humans involved in the Human Faction. The 21st century Guerrera/Correa family would not reveal their werewolf nature to the public or trigger their curses by taking a human life until they gained possession of the moonlight rings created by Genevieve in 2012, which allowed them to control their transformations and prevent being forced to turn on the full moon.

1928

 * Klaus, after daggering his sister Rebekah a few years before, was in France, and had a “falling out” with a powerful local people called the Gatineau family.

1930

 * The Moreau family (Nathalie’s Family) moves back to France in lieu of Noelle’s mother’s death

1933

 * Klaus was in Germany, and befriended a vampire artist named August Müller, who, as Klaus later found out, saw Werewolves as abomination, much like how Klaus' father, Mikael viewed them.
 * Elijah followed Klaus to Germany, after they haven't seen each other since 1919, when they ran away from Mikael. He came to inform Klaus that his actions in Germany caught Mikael's attention. Elijah tells Klaus that Werewolves are being killed in their hundreds within 20 miles of where they are.
 * But later Klaus and Elijah found out that it was August who was killing the werewolves, and told him to stop. But August didn't stop, and Klaus try to save the wolves, while Elijah told him not to intervene, as this is not his fight. Klaus got mad, and accidently tells him that he daggered Rebekah almost a decade before. Klaus then killed August and his people, and spared his family: Greta, Antoinette, and Roman Sienna.

1945

 * Leo Grimm is turned into a vampire unwillingly by an unnamed vampire.
 * A few months later, Noelle and Leo meet at Moreau’s Bar

1950s

 * At some point in this decade, Marcel Gerard enrolled in law school, presumably in New Orleans.

1974

 * Nicolette Moreau dies in her sleep
 * Noelle is not invited to attend the funeral
 * She crashes the funeral and is driven away by her witch descendants

1977

 * The Strix society of vampires used scare tactics to infiltrate and take control of aspects of New York City by having a member pretend to become a serial killer who ultimately became known as the Son of Sam.

1979

 * Nathalie Moreau dies
 * Noelle is not invited to Nathalie’s funeral

1982

 * April 7: Will Kinney was born.

1988

 * Twins Camille O'Connell and Sean O'Connell were born to unknown parents in New Orleans.

1991

 * June 6: Andréa Labonair was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to an unnamed werewolf mother and father. Her parents, members of one of the two royal bloodlines of the Crescent Wolf Pack, arranged for her to marry the recently-born Jackson Kenner of the second royal bloodline in the clan.
 * Summer: In New Orleans, Richard Xavier Dumas killed Andréa's parents after they revealed their intention to make peace with Marcel and his vampire army in order to, at the very least, call a truce, if not develop an alliance with them.
 * Marcel found baby Andréa in her cradle after finding her parents dead at their home. He brought her to Father Kieran O'Connell, priest at St. Anne's Church, to help find her adoptive family. She would later be adopted and renamed Hayley Marshall by the Marshall family, who had no idea she was a werewolf when they took her in.
 * It is presumed that shortly afterward, tensions between the Crescent Wolf Clan and Marcel's vampire army come to a head, and Marcel persuaded the witch Brynne Deveraux (who, unbeknownst to anyone, was possessed by fellow witch Céleste Dubois) to cast what would become known as the Crescent curse on the pack.
 * This curse forced all of its members who have activated their lycanthropy by killing a human to be trapped in their wolf form at all times, with the exception of the night of the full moon, when they would return to their human form for a few short hours. With this curse, the werewolves lost their control over the French Quarter and New Orleans as a whole, leaving a power vacuum that allowed Marcel and his vampires to take even more control over the factions.
 * Joshua Rosza was born to unnamed parents in Michigan.

1995
Monique Deveraux was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Jane-Anne Deveraux and an unknown father in late 1994/early 1995 as a result of an unplanned pregnancy when they were teenagers.
 * The Original Vampire and Vampire Hunter, Mikael, arrived in Mystic Falls, as he was looking for the human Petrova doppelgänger, Elena Gilbert, whom he knew Klaus would seek out to break his curse once he learned of her existence. When nobody was able to kill him, Abby Bennett Wilson used dark magic to desiccate Mikael and imprison him in a crypt in Charlotte, North Carolina in order to help and protect her best friend Miranda and her daughter Elena. The amount of magic necessary to cast the spell nearly killed her, and she became too emotionally and physically weak to practice witchcraft. Seeing this as an opportunity to start over without the complications and responsibilities of being a Bennett witch, she left her husband and her daughter and moved to North Carolina.
 * It is possible that Anna was also involved in Mikael's imprisonment, as she knew quite a bit about him and where he was entombed.
 * Davina Claire was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in late 1994/early 1995 to an unnamed mother and an unknown father. Shortly after her birth, Davina's father left the family, and she hasn't seen him since.
 * Abigail and Cassie were born to their respective unnamed parents in New Orleans in late 1994/early 1995.

2004

 * Thirteen-year-old Hayley Marshall went on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with several of her friends. At some point during their trip, she and her friends snuck out and got drunk before going out on the boat for some fun. Hayley was driving the boat when they got into an accident which ultimately killed one of her friends. Unbeknownst to Hayley, she had just triggered her werewolf curse by (accidentally) causing the death of a human.
 * On the next full moon, Hayley transformed into a werewolf for the first time in the living room of her home, leading to Hayley and her adoptive parents finally realizing that she was a werewolf. Her parents were so appalled and horrified by this revelation that they kicked her out of the house. Hayley then spent nearly a decade on her own as she traveled around the country in search of information about her biological parents.