A friend was arranging a birthday party for his mother. He telephoned her relatives and invited them, but one cousin came up missing. His phone number now belonged to someone else, and other relatives had not heard from him for a while. How can someone just drop out of sight and disappear?

Many family historians want to track down a living relative like this cousin.

People who are doing their adoption research want to track down a birth parent or grandparent; preferably one who is living.

As with all genealogical research, there is a "recipe" that can be followed.

The first step is to contact everyone who may have information. For my friend, that was the key. One of the relatives dug through his papers and found an old work phone number for the missing cousin. It worked. He was there. He had not moved, but he had changed his home phone number.

If the cousin had moved, the search would have changed. Privacy laws limit the resources that we have to trace living persons. There are "how-to" books on doing adoption research and on tracing living persons. They give excellent suggestions. For my guide to doing adoption research, click here.

One of the techniques is to look through city directories and phone books. City directories are similar to phone books. They contain names of adults, their addresses, and occupations. Public libraries usually keep a collection of old phone books and city directories.

Another technique is to look at marriage and divorce indexes. These are kept in county courthouses. Links to many courthouse websites are on the US GenWeb.

A death index is a list of people who have died, and it is arranged by last name. If you locate a relative in a death index, you can obtain an obituary that may have information on your person. A number of death indexes have been microfilmed and are listed in the Family History Library catalog. Go to http://www.familysearch.org and look in the online library catalog to see if there is a death index for the state where you are researching. A source for online death indexes is "Online Searchable Death Indexes for the USA."

Cemetery and funeral home records may help locate death dates for older relatives. Armed with a death date and place, you can look for an obituary that will list other relatives.Look in the cemetery section of CyndisList to see if you can find a website for cemeteries in the counties where your people lived.

Note: Connie Lenzen conducts a limited number of missing persons searches. Contact her if you want to hire her. Give the details in your e-mail. E-mail: ConnieLenzen@comcast.net

---

© 2000–2009

Connie Lenzen, CG

CG, Certified Genealogist is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by Board-certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Home

Columns and Articles

Speech List

Why Hire a Professional Genealogist

The National Genealogical Society's "Research in the States" series includes an Oregon guide. To order a copy, go to the NGS website.