My father was born in New york in 1910 and died in 1985. My family decided to do a family tree and research were my fathers parents were born etc. Going through the archives we found out that on my fathers original birth certificate the father listed is not a name we recognize. The woman told us that the certificate was changed years after my fathers birth with the name we have always know. For example, we were raised with the name smith. But now find out we are really not smith. New york records will not release the information to us and say we need a court order because it is the adoption laws. But my father is dead and all people involved are dead. My father would be 100 next year.
Do we have rights? This is really just a curiosity and would never change our name, but would like to know our blood line.

No there are no "rights" to these records.

Did the original birth certificate not list the original parents names ?

Very difficult in genealogy for people arriving l00 or so years ago on North American shores. The reason the name 'smith' is spelled so many different ways is because it was recorded wrong by the person writing the records. They spelled it 'smythe, smyth, smith' etc. So what appeared on the persons birth cert. didn't not correspond with the arrival data, and the arrival data is what would have counted as a permanent record for arriving on american shores.. Most people could not spell their name correctly, so it was left to guess work.

A surname from Scotland such as 'Gordon' would have arrived as 'Gerden" or 'Gorden' completely dessentizing the name from its scottish originality; making it almost impossible to trace through genealogical records.

See what I mean.

Kindest regards

Tick