One of our most popular questions is how to locate friends and relatives that you have lost touch with or how to find living people you have never met. Here are some of the tools we use to help with those questions.
The essential first step is to know the person’s current name. For males, that is relatively simple. Most men keep the same name throughout life. Occasionally, they will be known by a nickname. Sometimes, they will get an official change of name; that means finding a court record where the change took place. Once you know their name, you can search for them in any database. Because of the large number of duplicate names in the U.S., it is also useful to know date of birth and probable city of residence.
For women, it becomes more complicated. In America, most women change their name when they marry. If the woman has had several marriages, that means several changes of names. When they are divorced, that may mean another change of name. For women who have died since 1936 in the U.S., the Social Security Applications and Claims Index may hold the answer. Each time the woman changes her name, the Social Security Administration will obtain a record of it. That database will show the woman’s new name and the date it was reported, usually soon after the marriage took place. Note: This database can work only if the subject is deceased.
If the woman is still alive and you don’t know her married name, it will likely require your finding a news article about a relative that mentions her. The most common source will be the obituary of a parent or sibling. Sometimes it will be the report of a sibling’s marriage. If you’re lucky, it may tell the city where the woman resides, or the first name of her spouse.
Once you have the latest identifying data, here are some databases to try:
Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org: Although they are advertised as databases of deceased persons, they contain some recent directory files that may be helpful by confirming a birth date.
AtoZdatabases in our Digital Library: AtoZdatabases contains nationwide directories of individuals and businesses. It may give you the person’s address and phone number, along with a list of neighbors. This database is free to Prince William Public Libraries cardholders.
Facebook: If your family uses Facebook, you may find many clues to their current whereabouts and activities.
There are many sites that provide a variety of special data such as criminal history, but they all require paying a fee. The following free site has the most useful information for the genealogist:
FamilyTreeNow.com: Search by name, place of residence, and date of birth, as well names of possible relatives. The results contain a variety of facts from public records, including data on recently deceased persons:
• Month and year of birth.
• A list of addresses over the past two decades with the current residence shown first.
• Phone numbers by date, both landlines and wireless.
• Email addresses.
• A list of “possible relatives.”
• A list of “possible associates.”
I have found this latter database to be the handiest for tracking living persons. But even it may miss people who are deliberately trying to elude public scrutiny or law enforcement.
