Have you ever wondered what happened to your long lost family members? Have you wanted to know how they are doing, if they have kids, and what their lives are like now? We all want to reconnect with our loved ones who we lost touch with. So how do you find them? Here is a list of three things that will help you find out where your relatives live so that the two of you can get in contact again!
There are many people out there who would love to find long lost family members. Finding a long lost relative can be difficult but luckily, the internet is here to help! To start your search, you’ll need to know what information about your family member you have. For example, do they have a maiden name? What year were they born? Knowing this will make it easier for you to find them online. Once you’ve found their social media profiles and databases with that information on them, congratulations! You’ve found a long-lost relative!
Find out what you can about your family’s history
Start by researching your family’s history. Do you know where your family members are originally from? What about their maiden names and birth years? That information will make it easier for you to find them online.
Find out what they’re up to nowadays
Once you’ve found the social media profiles of that long-lost relative reach out and make contact.
Search for records of births, deaths, and marriages in the area where they lived
Try searching for birth records and marriage certificates in the area where your long-lost relative once lived.
Find out if they’re still alive
If you’ve found an obituary for a person of that name, congratulations! They are in fact dead and no longer living. Find their date of death to see how old they were when they died and now can calculate roughly how many
Research local newspapers to see if any articles mention them or their families
Local newspapers are also a good source of info on lost family members.
If you’ve found an obituary for a person of that name, congratulations! They are in fact dead and no longer living. Find their date of death to see how old they were when they died and now can calculate roughly how many
Research local newspapers to see if any articles mention them or their families.
Search for obituaries on Ancestry or other genealogy websites
You might be able to find information online at a site like Ancestry. Genealogy websitesie have a database of obituaries and other records.
Contact any family members you might know who could be related to the person
You might also want to contact anyone else in your life that knows about this long lost relative, like friends or distant relatives. They may not have known how close they were to your family member before now,
Check census records from around the time when they would have been living there
Census records are a good source to find people who are no longer living.
Check out the Social Security Administration website
The SSA maintains a database of all Americans with an SSN, including those born before 1951 and alive today as well as those deceased. It is searchable by name or SSN (or family member’s name).
Look up old phone books from that area and search through it manually by looking at every page one-by-one to find them (this is a very tedious process)
Looking for relatives in the phone book may take a lot of time time and effort to look through every page in a phone book.
Check the Department of Motor Vehicles for their information on them
The DMV can be used as an authoritative source to find Americans with driver’s licenses, which are given out to people who live in that state or country. It is usually not good at finding family members outside of your country.
Search the internet for information about your family members
If you don’t know where to start try searching online. Searching the internet will give you a lot of resources to help find your family members.
If you know where they are from, search for them on that country’s census records; if not and especially if the person is no longer alive, try searching in their hometown or other places where they might have lived.
Look through old yearbooks or pictures of relatives to find clues
Old school yearbooks can provide clues and hints. Pictures of relatives can sometimes offer a new angle on people you might not have known about.
Contact an ancestry DNA testing company and send in a sample of your saliva
Science has advanced so much in the past 5 years they can no analyze your DNA! Your DNA will reveal important clues about where you came from and it may offer links to unknown family members!
The National Archives in the UK has a lot of information about people who died in WWI and WWII
If you are looking for a relative that died in WWI or WWII try the National Archives. in the UK. They have a lot of information about people who died in WWI and WWII
Keep looking for your long-lost family members! There’s no time limit on how long you can search so don’t give up too soon!
You will never know if they are still alive unless you try to find them, right?
Once you’ve found a family member, the next step is to contact them. Make sure that your research has been thorough and accurate so they can confirm their relationship with you if needed. You should also be mindful of any privacy settings on social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn which might prevent people from seeing who’s viewing their profile pages.
It may take some time for someone to respond back to your message, especially if they’ve never had an interest in finding out about relatives before now. Be patient! The emotional payoff will be worth it when you finally reconnect with someone after years apart.