Most of us take for granted that we either have our birth certificate in our possession or can get our hands on a copy fairly easily by filling out a form and paying an application fee.

Not so for Adam Williamson.

The 72-year-old Mathews County man knows when and where he was born, but since his mother gave birth on the way to the hospital, she was never issued a birth certificate. For about 25 years, he and good friend Deirdre Dunn have been working with officials in South Carolina (where Williamson was born) to get a copy of that vital document.

A birth certificate is used for everything from establishing citizenship and providing identity to getting a passport, driver’s license or Social Security card.

This especially posed a problem when Williamson lost his Social Security card and could not remember his SSI number. Dunn helped Williamson obtain it but was told that they would not be able to without his birth certificate and that there was nothing they could do for him. The two wrote to the Social Security Administration and when they received a letter back, it said that it could not help them and in small print there were numbers. It was the Social Security number that he had forgotten.

“Somebody wrote in pencil a Social Security number on the letter they sent back. It was really, really light,” said Dunn. “That is the only way that we are able to transact business. Because if they hadn’t had done that, I don’t know what would have happened. Like he wouldn’t have been able to get jobs, you can’t do anything when you don’t have documentation.”

Williamson was born in 1952 in Jackson, South Carolina, in his family’s Model T Ford on the way to the hospital. He was raised by his biological grandfather William Sye and his wife on their farm. At the age of 13, several years after his grandfather passed away, he was sent to live with his mother and his siblings in Newark, New Jersey. That was the first time that he had met his mother, Ada Mae Sye. He did not stay there long and was kicked out of the house. From there, he lived on the streets of Newark where he would sleep in abandoned apartments and cars. He worked at a grocery store and a liquor store so he could get by.

Williamson said that one day he was walking the streets and ran into his biological uncle (his father’s brother) who took him in to live with him. He still was working his two jobs at the time.

Williamson then said that he met the Mitchell family. Charlie and Helen Mitchell took him into their family. The Mitchells helped him get into the Job Corps at Camp Kilmer, which was a school in Edison, New Jersey. He was 18 at the time and he stayed there for four years. He received his driver’s license and a government ID while there.

Then he went from job to job. He even had his own business, AFW Transportation Corporation. During his time as a driver, he met Dunn in 1995, whom he refers to as his sister. While not Williamson’s real sister, the two have been friends for so long it seems as if they were blood siblings.

Dunn was living in Irvington, New Jersey, at the time and Williamson was still living in Newark. Williamson would give Dunn rides where she needed to go since she did not have a car at the time and he also helped her renovate her home. Not long after Dunn decided to move to Wilmington, North Carolina, Williamson went with her.

As their friendship grew, Williamson opened up to Dunn about how he had not been able to obtain his birth certificate and the two started trying to obtain one for him in 1999.

“I guess I started when I was in North Carolina. I had been hearing stories about it before like when we were in New Jersey,” said Dunn.

Dunn started with Williamson’s father, Adam Williamson Sr. who told her that he had to get a delayed birth certificate himself. He was obtained one and that is when she decided to try to see if she could help Williamson get a birth certificate as well.

“I wrote to the South Carolina Department of Health (and Environmental Control) and the first time there was no record of his birth,” said Dunn. “They never mentioned anything about a delayed birth record.”

Dunn said that she did not follow up after that. During that time, Williamson was still trying to get a license, but couldn’t for a while. He then was able to get one in 2001 using a marriage license from his previous marriage from 1983.

“He went to the North Carolina DMV and he was able to get a license without a birth certificate, because his marriage certificate had his birth date on it,” she said.

After that, Dunn said she did go back to SCDHEC and followed up to see what they could do to get Williamson a copy of his birth certificate. Three supporting documents were needed that showed his date of birth such as a marriage license older than five years, a life insurance policy over five years, and a driving record older than five years. Williamson only had some of the supporting documents, so he still could not get a birth certificate. Dunn asked what they needed for a delayed birth certificate and she was told he would need the same documents. She got all of the documents he needed, but it still was not enough to get a delayed birth certificate.

Dunn felt defeated, so for a long period of time they did nothing. When she started again, she tried to obtain school records for Williamson. She tried to obtain records from his elementary school in South Carolina, but the school had been shut down. When they went to the state’s Board of Education, they did not have any records of it. That was in 2023.

Dunn was able to help Williamson to get more documentation for him to get his delayed birth certificate. She reached back out to South Carolina in February with the documents needed, but they rejected two out of the three documents he had for his delayed certificate, because the documents had to have his full name. They also told them that they could petition a judge either in South Carolina or a judge in the county where he resides to establish a record of birth.

Dunn said that they contacted legal aid to ask for help. The Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia said that it could not help them, but said that the South Carolina Society of Legal Aid might, but there was no guarantee that they would.

Dunn said that if someone were to ask him to show proof of his birth, he would not be able to.

“A lot of people born around or before his time (Williamson) that were people of color did not have that kind of stuff and people did not feel that it was important,” she said.

As of right now, Dunn and Williamson are waiting to hear back from the South Carolina Society of Legal Aid and are looking into the U.S. Census to see if they find anything there.

Williamson and his wife, Jannie Hudgins Williamson, live in the Cricket Hill Apartments in Mathews.