Whether you were adopted, your parents were adopted, or part of your family is estranged, tracing your biological family tree can be extremely difficult. It might even seem impossible! But you’ll be happy to know that it is possible, as long as you’re willing to do a little more digging than many people might need to. Depending on the resources you have, it might even be substantially easier than you would think. No matter what your family tree is like, here are some easy ways to find your family as quickly and simply as possible.
Look into official documentation.
Whether you’re struggling to find your family because of adoption or estrangement, there’s generally official documentation showing that those people exist in some form or another. If your family is estranged, you might be able to find them by looking at your other family members’ birth certificates or similar documents. For example, if your grandparents are estranged, you can often find their legal names by looking at your parents’ birth certificates.
In the case of adoption, however, it does get a little trickier. Though there are many campaigns toward allowing unrestricted access for all adoptees to their original birth certificate, that’s not the case at the moment. The person who was adopted might only have an altered copy of their birth certificate, some vaguely identifying information about their parents, or no information at all, leaving them with no legal recourse. Though hitting a dead end here can be frustrating, at least you’ll know that you tried.
Ask around.
Usually, if you’re dealing with estrangement, there are at least some family members that either remember the estranged members or are as interested in getting into contact with them as you are. Take advantage of that; family members are often the best people to ask because they might know more than you and they’re likely willing to help you, especially if you can get them on your side. Even if they don’t have any current information on estranged family members, they might be able to help you “jump the gap” and find their parents, so you can continue building a family tree from there.
Use social media.
For better or for worse, social media has irrevocably changed the way we interact with the world. Facebook has over two billion active monthly users, as of the last quarter of 2017, and that means you have a better chance than ever of connecting with a lost family member online. Whether you decide to browse through lists of people with your last name, use a search engine, or try to hop through people who are friends with others, you can use social media to find people fairly easily. Also, if you know where they were born or you can find out what city they live in, you can use that information to narrow down your results.
Try an online people search.
As the internet has expanded, so have online people searches, and now you can find the potential relatives of almost anyone by looking them up on a people search! Using PeopleFinders, you can look up yourself or other members of your family, and find potential relatives that are also in the databank. If you have a person’s phone number, even an old one that an estranged family member no longer uses, you can try the reverse phone lookup feature to get a contact for that number. There are all kinds of ways that PeopleFinders can help you track down a family member, so you can get more information to build your family tree as thoroughly as possible.
If you want to build a thorough biological family tree, you’ll need to do a bit of digging. If part of your family is estranged from the rest, or someone in your lineage was adopted, you might have an even more difficult time than other people would. But it is possible to uncover your heritage, no matter what has happened or who you have to go through to do it. If you’re looking for living relatives to help fill you in on pieces you might have missed, PeopleFinders is a great way to get the information you’re looking for without having to go through other channels that might or might not even work. Use PeopleFinders to get the information you need, and start your biological family tree with no hassle.
