They are among at least 2,000 adults who had similar experiences in Ireland as children from the 1940s to 1960s, and 500 of them ended up in New York. Theirs is a story rooted in the intolerance of Irish society at the time toward births out of wedlock. Now, the children of that time have joined hundreds of others who found, or are trying to find, their elderly birth mothers, and their Irish roots.