Using Genealogy Websites

What do you do when you know your subjects name and nothing else? Try researching their family history. A genealogy site such as ancestry.com or footnote.com can be very helping with finding information such as relatives or birth dates. A quick search of the subjects name may return birth and death information as well as parents and siblings names and birth dates. Birth information often shows not only the exact birth date, but also where they were born and and the name of there parents. This can be beneficial because many people have family in the towns where they were born. A search at Zabasearch, U.S. Search or Whitepages.com could return names of people who share the same last name and live in the area. You could also search the parents names and perhaps find them as well. Death information can be useful as well. The ancestry.com website can search the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) to tell you if your subject or their parents are deceased. This information will tell you the last location of their benefits. You can then search local obituaries for any information that could help you locate your subject. Ancestry.com will also search old phone directories and possibly return old addresses and phone numbers. This information may still be current. Another benefit of these sites are that many people post their family histories on these sites. A simple search may find that your subject is listed in a member's family tree. You may then be able to contact the person and find out more information on your subject. Ancestry.com and footnote.com offer some free searches. However for more detailed searches, an inexpensive subscription is required. These subscriptions can be by the month or year and both offer free trial memberships. These sites are very valuable to any researcher and may be a necessity to any search. You can find links to the sites mentioned to the right of this post.

A Daughter Comes Home - Part 2

I was very familiar with the Mobile area. My wife and I, for five years, had spent a week each summer on Dauphin Island. This beautiful island was only a half hour’s drive south of Mobile. I began my search by contacting the Mobile County Courthouse. I asked if they minded searching marriage and divorce records for my sister’s name. They came back with some very good news. The court records showed that my sister had married a man with a very unique Greek name a little over a decade before. I was again turned to Google and searched the man’s name. I found that, in 2007, he was a car salesman for a small used car dealership in Pensacola, FL. I called the listed number only to find that the dealership was no longer in business. I decided to search his last name and the town of Mobile. I found an obituary that listed him and stated that he was a residence of Gulfport, MS. I called the courthouse in that town and had them search their public records. I found another marriage record to a different woman. I then searched for her name in Google. I found her listed on a social networking site. The name on her email was my sister’s ex-husbands name. I sent an email to that address and then took a break from my research for a couple of days. A few days later, I received an email from my sister’s ex-husband. He told me that my sister still lived in Mobile and that they had mutual friends. He told me that she had tried to find her father in the past but had little luck. He offered to send her a mutual friend to give her my phone number. I was very excited at this point, but then nervousness set in. I thought about how she must feel and what I would say if I found her. I thought about my father, who did not know that I was searching for her. Would he approve? Finally a couple of days later, as I sat watching football, the call came. My sister and I spoke for nearly an hour. She told me that her mother always spoke badly of my father and refused to tell her anything about him. She told me that she had a three year old son and had been with his father for several years. She did not know she had brothers and sisters and was very surprised to find that she had nearly a dozen nieces and nephews. She wanted to talk to her father, but did not want to surprise him after all of these years. So I called him and told him about finding his daughter. I told him that she would be calling soon. He was as nervous as she was. Over the next couple of months, the two spoke everyday for hours at a time. They spent time learning about one another and discussing when they could have a reunion. A few days before Thanksgiving, 2008, my sister and her family moved to Oklahoma. She was able to meet, and get to know, her three brothers and three sisters as well as all of her nieces and nephews. She stayed in Oklahoma until March of 2009, when her and her family moved back to Mobile so that her husband could spend time with his dying father. She stills talks with her family back in Oklahoma and hopes to visit again soon.

L to R: My little sisters, Sheena and Krystal, my dad, my older sister Patricia and myself.
Photo taken the night we first met Patricia

A Daughter Comes Home - Part 1

On December 13, 1971, a young couple gave birth to their first born child. She quickly became the joy of their life. However, they would not remain a happy family for long. By 1973, the child’s mother soon found comfort in another man’s arms. The mother was having an affair with the father’s best friend. The child’s father decided to confront the two about their relationship. A fight broke out and the police soon came. By the time the police arrived, the child had left with her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend. The child would not see her father again for 36 years. Turned out that this child and I have a lot in common, you see, that little girl’s father went on to meet a young mother of two. He began to raise those children as his own, the oldest of which was a young girl born the same year as his own daughter. The girl’s father and the mother of two married in 1977 and I was born shortly thereafter. As a child, I often heard of my older sister and the events that had left my father forever scarred. My father never spoke badly of his daughter’s mother, although his eyes could not hide his hurtful feelings. Last year, I began my search for my older sister. The search was not easy, for all I knew was her name, birthday, birthplace, the name of a couple of uncle’s and her mother’s name. I began by searching Google, which turned up nothing. I searched voter’s registrations and campaign contributions in Ft. Worth, TX, and the surrounding areas. This was her last known residence. Everything I tried left me empty handed. I held a membership to ancestry.com, so I decided to search on that site. First, I searched her mother’s name. Nothing turned up. I then began searching her uncle’s names. Two of them turned up nothing and then the third turned up a birth record of a son. This son would be my sister’s cousin. I took this name and searched Google. I found a classmates.com entry which stated that he was in the military. I then searched his name on myspace.com and found that he was in Iraq, but live in Hawaii. I moved down the page to his friends list to view the sites of his top friends. More often than not, the first friend on their list is a relative, spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend. The first friend on his list, a female, ended up being his wife. I contacted her and told her what I was searching for and hoped I had the right person. I left my email and phone number in case they wanted to contact me. That night, my phone rang and it was my sister’s uncle. I was very excited until I found out that he had not talked to his sister or niece in more than 10 years. However, the conversation was not a total waste. He told me that not long after the day my father last seen his daughter, her mother and mother’s boyfriend moved to Mobile, AL, and raised my sister there. They lived there last time he spoke to them. My search in Ft. Worth, TX, had come to an end and my search in Mobile, AL, was about to begin. To Be Continued………..

Beginning Your Search

You have recently decided to try and locate that long lost friend or relative. Where do you go from here?

First, you need to get a notebook that you can dedicate solely to your search. This notebook is where you will keep track of all of your research. I like to use composition notebooks like we used in our High School English classes. You can later transfer the information to your computer, but you need to continue to update the notebook so that you may take it with you should your search require travel.

Secondly, you will need to gather any and all information you can find and write it in your notebook. Be sure that you stay organized so that your research does not get confusing. On the first page, or inside the cover, you will need to write the subjects name, date of birth (D.O.B.), Social Security Number (SSN), place of birth, any known relatives and any towns known to live in. Don't worry if you do not know all of this information. Just write down any and all information you can think of. The SSN can often assist you in maintaining various government records.

You next step will be to contact any known family members to see if they may know where to find the subject. This sounds to easy, but you would be surprised at how many people fail to try this first only to find out that they could have saved a lot of time and money by doing so in the first place. Another easy search, that most people do not think of, is to simply Google the subjects name or the names of any known relatives. If the subject has ever made the news, local newspapers, listed in an obituary or had a social networking page such as Facebook or MySpace, changes are that they will show up on Google or similar search engines. With Google you can narrow your search by using the "search within results" link at the bottom of the page. This will give you another search box and limit the search to searching within the previously returned results. You can also use Google to search for phone numbers. In the search box, type "Phonebook: Subjects Name" and any listed phone number will come up. There are also numerous online phonebook and addresss search sites that I will cover in future posts.

By beginning your search, you will opening a new page in your life. One must always remember that not everyone wants to be found. Prior to searching, you need to make sure you can handle the possibility of your subject rejecting you once found. Often there is built up animosity toward someone who has caused them pain. This person may not be you, but someone close to you. In the case of a lost relative, consider the possibility that another relative was the reason for them not wanting to be found. I am not telling you not to search for a lost love. But, everyone needs to be aware of the possible outcome of their search. To the right of this blog you will find some very helpful links that may help you find information on your subject.