If there are certain people in your family who you're keen to get back in touch with, or even meet for the first time, the Internet has made it easier and more practical than ever to track down people in all parts of the world - even those who don't show up in traditional ancestry sources, such as census records and indexes of births, marriages and deaths.
If the people you're looking for are distant relatives or members of your extended family, searching for people close to them could give you some leads, especially in the case of siblings who share the same name. As with any family tree searches, you should begin by finding out as much as possible about the individuals from people you haven't lost touch with, as even a memory of a job they once had or a street they lived in could prove to be invaluable material for your search.
If you're looking for people who live or moved overseas, the Internet is often the only practical option for tracking them down, and distance should not be a factor when searching on social networks or signing up to web services featuring specialised people searches. These can be narrowed down according to certain criteria, so the more information you have about a person, the higher your chances of success. In the modern digital age, many people have an online presence that they may not even know about, and you could find details of their user accounts on everything from forums to auction sites.
If the relative you're searching for has a foreign name, consider that they may have anglicised it when emigrating overseas, and in the case of women it may be the case that they married and changed their names. Try out different common spellings or avoid the tricky name issue altogether and favour other known criteria such as birth dates, occupation and place of residence, especially if these are particularly distinctive.
If you're really stuck in your search, consider broadening your horizons to check military records and even prison records. When performing any ancestry research or when you're filling in the missing branches of family trees, you should always be prepared to encounter challenges. However, when you do finally make a breakthrough, the whole process will seem worthwhile. Discovering your family's history can be one of the most rewarding projects you take on in your life, and modern technology has made the process easier than ever before.
Sean Burke writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.
