On the other side of the globe, or maybe even in your town, you might have a relative you never knew about. This article shares some tips for finding long-lost relatives in your family tree.
You know your closest relatives, uncles, cousins, and aunts. Your mother might have a cousin who had an interesting fate. Apart from getting married and having children, they might have amassed a fortune. Your relative could be a millionaire – imagine that!
You might have been sitting beside a distant relative in your English class without knowing it. The possibilities are endless.
You might have been adopted and never knew your biological parents. You’ve never met your half-sister, for example.
Looking at your family history forwards rather than retrospectively can be very interesting in the process of looking for lost relatives. What’s more, it can change your life. One family ancestor might have offspring across the globe.
You would use the same strategy to trace your family forward as you would with regular family history. Here are the steps to take.
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Take a DNA test
A DNA test can help you connect with living family members who share parts of your DNA as well as discover your genetic roots. Moreover, it can even let you get in touch with your matches. Some websites that offer these services, like Find My Past, offer tree-to-tree hints and private messaging. From time to time, bubbles will appear around your family tree. These bubbles mean the site might have unearthed information in your family history records that matches your details, and this information might be worth exploring further.
Do a People Search
One of the most effective ways to find people online is by looking up civil records, such as marriage and birth records. A free background check can help you find a relative in your family tree and explore records to see who they married. Then, you can use that information to look for descendants bearing the father’s last name or the mother’s maiden name over a period just after the wedding ceremony.
You might get their spouse’s full name this way, which does away with the hassle of perusing the marriage index. Keep at it until you get to the end of the online indexes. The local records service can provide access to additional indexes.
Autosomal DNA Test
You might think about taking this test to determine an unknown parent or connect with your biological family. Men and women can take autosomal DNA tests, providing subjects with DNA matches within a few generations on both their biological parents’ sides of the family.
A DNA match shows your DNA partially matches segments of someone else’s. The extent of DNA shared determines the closeness of that particular relative.
Take a Test from Multiple Companies
Leading DNA testing providers compare your DNA to that of others in their database. This is why it can be a good idea to test with several companies or upload your DNA to multiple websites. They will compare your DNA to a larger pool of potential matches if you test with more than one provider.
DNA Match Review
Most providers will issue a list of matches after testing your DNA. The next step is to review your DNA matches. You might get a distant cousin match, a close cousin match, a half-sister or brother match, and a biological parent match in your list in the rarest of cases.
You might connect with close relatives successfully after discovering more about a distant match. However, a match of cousin once removed is perfect. Some cousin matches might have additional details available for viewing online. These might include places of birth, last names, or even a pedigree with locations, dates, and names.
Explore Newspapers
Historical newspaper collections are another excellent source. You might come across a wedding, funeral, or another family announcement. These often list entire families by name, helping you add details to the overall picture of the line.
Voting Registers
Many countries enter voters’ names and addresses in the electoral register. This can be a successful approach to tracing living relatives, although people can choose to withhold personal information from the public record.
Groups on Social Media
Many groups and societies on social media are dedicated to finding lost relatives. These communities can be a beneficial source. Even help from a single person can open many doors for further exploration.
Tools for Adopted Persons
If you brought up the subject with your adoptive parents and they weren’t forthcoming, or they have passed away, check with the organization responsible for your adoption. You can also try an adoption reunion website.
In the US, open adoption gives adoptive parents and birth parents the chance to meet and build strong and lasting relationships. However, many adoptees born before the mid-1980s find searching for anything from biological family member information to birth records challenging.
Adult adoptees often look for documents like adoption records or their original birth certificates and the names of their biological parents in a closed adoption. Tracking down these details can be challenging, expensive, and even overwhelming. You might get lucky with a people search site. If you have a little bit of information, you can enter it in the search field and perhaps find more based on that.
Making Contact
If you got a DNA match or located a long-lost relative, the final step is reaching out to them through the platform’s messaging system. Consider the following aspects when using DNA testing to find your biological family before reaching out.
The DNA match might not know how to help you establish an immediate family or biological parents.
The other members of your biological parents’ family might not know that you were born or adopted.
Finally, your biological parents or other relatives might not be interested in making contact.
If you identified a living relative without help from a DNA website, send them an email or a letter instead of calling them. Provide your name and mailing address and ask them to acknowledge receipt even if they don’t wish to make contact or aren’t actually a relative. It’s best if you include a stamped addressed envelope for their response.