Welcome to the Resources page!

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We will walk you through the best ways to maximize the results of your search and get results fast!

 

First:  Create a dedicated email address that will be used strictly for your search. There are numerous free email sites available, such as Gmail, Yahoo, mail.com, and numerous others. Pick a name that will be very generic. Do not use your personal name, or just your surname or other identifiable information.

 

Example of good email addresses – Smithresearch@blahblah.com  or Smithtree@blahblah.com or even smiudbth@blahblah.com

Avoid using Johnsmith@blahblah.com or jsmith476@blah.com

 

The reasons for this will become obvious. For one, it avoids stalkers, because personal information will be passing back and forth through this account. Secondly, commercial “botscrapers” , or web-spiders, crawl these sites looking for email addresses to sell to spammers.  You WILL get a ton of spam, it cannot be avoided, so keep it confined to this address.

 

NEXT, you can start your posting (be sure to activate and confirm your email account first).

Posting involves much more than a paragraph on FaceBook.

Too many people eagerly make a post on FaceBook and sit back in anticipation of replies. There are rarely any. To be honest, there are a huge amount of people out there looking for other people. You will be lost in a sea of posts.

Posting to an adoption site or FaceBook is like buying a lottery ticket. If you are serious about results, you play more than one ticket or number.

To increase the odds, you will approach this part of it the same way.

With that in mind, get a notebook and record every site your posting is placed on.  Make sure you record your login info as well as the posting number (if they use this type of system).

 

Some places to start :

 

G’s Adoption registry – www.gsadoptionregistry.com

 

Judy’s place – www.findmyfamily.org

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Google groups - theadoptiondatabase@googlegroups.com

 

Seeker – www.the-seeker.com

 

Yahoo groups – http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/adoptionreunionangels/info?soc_trk=ma

 

Adoption Reunion Registry – http://registry.adoption.com

 

There are numerous others. Avoid any “pay to play” sites, there is no need for them. The more you utilize the better your chances.

 

WHAT TO POST:

 

Certain information is critical to success.

 

If you are an ADOPTEE looking for biological family, you will need the following:

A copy of your birth certificate.

Any other information that you heard, learned, or acquired along the way.

The useful things on the birth certificate will be your Date of Birth (DOB) and place of birth. There will rarely be much other useful info on it. Use these items (DOB and place of birth) in the post, and include your current FULL name. This is critical. My own search was seriously delayed because I only had a first and middle name to work with.

If you know of other information, (like your birth name, mothers name, ethnicity, religion, etc) include as much as you can.

You should also have your final adoption date available. It frequently gives the location where the adoption was finalized and this can be a big help in the search.

 

If you are a FAMILY member searching for an adoptee, you will probably have even less information.

As a birth mother, and sometimes a birth father, you may know the surname of the family that adopted your child. This makes it relatively easy, as you will have a name and a birthdate. This quickly becomes an exercise in simply tracking people down. If you do not have this information (like me) you need to figure out the information that you do have. You may know the name of the Placement Agency, this may help as some like to work in specific areas. In our case, all the children were placed in Westchester County. This can narrow the search some.

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For example – I knew we were looking for a brother. I knew he was probably born in Catskill, NY. I knew within a few years of when he was born. I had a first name, “Kenny”. Plugging all that into these adoption sites, I turned up a hit.

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Birthname: Kenneth Carangelo

Gender: Male

Adoptee Name: Peter Anthony

Birth Place: New York

Adoption Date: October 31, 1958

Judge: Maximilian Moss

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Notice what I did not get from his posting –

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No birth date, instead he gave his adoption date. This was not much use although it did prove that my guess as to his birth era was correct (1957-1959).

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No birth location. I did get New York, but no specifics. Looking up the Judge on Google gave me Kings County Surrogates Court. This meant that the family that adopted him lived in Kings County (Brooklyn).

But I had his current name! All I needed to do was look up that family name in Brooklyn around 1958.

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Needless to say, there were countless “Anthony” families living in Brooklyn.

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I began a massive letter writing campaign. Every potential “Peter Anthony” that fit the description for age was sent a self addressed stamped envelope containing a quick note and a return form. Surprisingly I got a large percentage of these back. More surprisingly, many were adopted themselves and looking for family.  None of these replies could verify all the details in the posting however, although some came breathtakingly close.

Unfortunately, I found out in the end that “Peter Anthony” was only a first and middle name. If I had written every Peter Anthony on the planet, I would not have found him, as the initial information was incomplete.

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CRITICAL- Names are crucial. If you are looking to connect, full complete names are a must, now is not the time for privacy concerns.

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Contact information – The post above was from 2012. Even though I replied immediately, I never received a response. If you do not check your email every day, you may miss a critical communication. Also beware of changing your email address and not updating it in the contact information on the site. There is NO OTHER WAY to reach you. The site administrators will not provide any details that are not listed in the post, do not bother asking. (I did.)

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About 6 months after this, while still continuing with my letter campaign, I was able to narrow the window of the birth year a bit more, and I settled on 1957 as the best possible chance, even though technically it could have been from Dec. 1956 (nine months after his sister) to October 1958 (final adoption  date). I went back to my postings and edited the date to say 1957. (prior to this it was the range 1956-1959).

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Almost immediately I got another hit. (Seems like a hint, after 3 or 4 months, shift the dates around if you do not have an exact one)

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Birth Name: Kenneth

Adoptive Name: Peter Anthony

DOB: Jul. 28, 1957

Gender: Male

Birth Location: Westchester County, NY

Additional Info: Last name of birth parents was either Carabgello, Carangelo, or Carnagello.

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Well, a bit more useful info this time. I now have am exact birth date, excellent.

The “Birth Location” does not match the previous post info, but is very close (Westchester County is next to Kings County). The real key lies in the “additional information” line. “Carangelo” is the name we are looking for. ALWAYS add as much additional information as you can, every little bit helps.

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Once again, the post is from 2012, but I am confident that I can follow this through with the information I now have.

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Before I had the chance to follow this up, I received an email from the site manager. All it included was a post from an online obituary.

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I had a hard time believing this. Years of searching and I end up with an obituary? And a recent one at that.

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At first, I thought there must be a mistake. While this guy was indeed “Peter Anthony”, that was not his full name. The wife’s name looked familiar though. In the first post, under additional information, I had a name of a spouse, and it was very unusual. It matched, although it was misspelled in the post.  I still was unsure. I certainly did not want to believe that years of searching came to this.

So back to research – Intelius, Spokeo, Radaris all excel at finding living people. Before very long I had a list of phone numbers and family members and I began to call. Several had been disconnected, one was a wrong number, one had an answering machine, (I left a short message, but hey, would you believe some schmo calling who says he’s your brother-in-law?)

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It was another 3 days before someone picked up the phone. Yes, Peter had made those posts. Yes, he was looking for his family. These conversations are by nature very awkward. I mailed of a letter with my contact information. What more can I say?

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These searches CAN and often DO end this way. Time is not on your side in these situations.

If you are going to search, go all out, or not at all.

Now that you have made your posts, you still have much more work to do.

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Run the information you have through every possible search engine there is.

Here are a few of the useful ones I have found –

Property directory – https://rehold.com

People – www.peekyou.com

People – www.zabasearch.com

People – https://pipl.com

ALL ID - http://itools.com/tool/wink-people-search

ALL – Google – www.google.com * special note on this search engine, Google only shows results from two identical domains per page, so if all of your info is one one site, Google will only show two results for that search per page of searches. The genealogy search engine here : http://www.genealogyintime.com/tools/genealogy-search-engine.html will bypass this Google issue however.

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Names  - Radaris, Spokeo, BeenVerified, Intelius, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

There are many more. Be sure to rearrange the search terms, this can make a huge difference in the results.

Here is another step for full on searching –

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Use a genealogy website. They have vast databases that are specifically designed to search for people.

There is a trick to this, it involves using the “arrowhead” method.  You will know the name of your target, usually through your search engine results. Plug that person into the “home person” on your “family tree”. Using the search engines listed above, find the mother and father and plug them in. That is usually all it takes to get the site searching. Follow the links back to grandparents then follow them forward again. This will give you all the names associated with those people, and you can check them against your research. You will not just get names however, you will see where people moved to, where they used to live, employment, military service etc. Plenty of info here, although you will find many dead ends as well.  I call it the “arrowhead” method because you start with a ‘current’ person, go back a generation or two, then come back to the present, the shape is kinda an upsidedown “V”, so “arrowhead” it is. This is useful for finding living relatives to contact or write to. It can also show up adoptions, look for children's birthdates that are less than 9 months apart.

Other helpful notes - Ancestry, and most other sites, automatically restrict searches on living people. To get around this, assign these people a "death date" and mark them as "deceased". This will unlock a few other searches that may normally be left out. Use a consistent date so you know by looking at it that they are not really dead, I use December 21, 2012, since that was the end of the world as we knew it.

Other tricks - always include a birth year and a death year. The searches do not activate well with these left blank. Take a guess if necessary, but fill in the blank with something. Add a birth location as well, it is usually safe to use the address of a parent.  I noticed Ancestry may take a full day to process new matches when you add information like this, so do not expect instant results, let it sit a day and then come back.

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Alternatively, you can use the "Mirror Method". This is based on DNA tests.

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(From Adoption Reunion Registry on FaceBook.)

MIRROR TREES FOR ADOPTEES - People have been asking us how to utilize their Ancestry, 23andMe, and Family Tree DNA results to find their biological families. We have been doing Mirror Trees for awhile, with great success. It is time consuming, but worth it in the end. Here is how to start your own mirror tree:

For folks with no known parent or biological family

Take an autosomal DNA test at all three major companies (AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA, and 23andMe) if you can.

Transfer at least one of those kits to GEDmatch.com (a free site supported by donations). Males can also do Y DNA testing at Family Tree DNA

Starting from the closest match, build out that match’s tree at Ancestry.com (make it private and non-searchable) in order to use the AncestryDNA hint system.

Identify the in common with (ICW) matches/shared matches with the match in step 2.

Build the trees of the ICW/shared matches and find the common ancestors between these matches. NOTE: The closest match may be at any one of the three companies.

Determine who is descended from all these common ancestors.
Connect your AncestryDNA to these descendants; see if you get matches through all of the branches or only some of them.

Repeat for each match working back through all your match lists.

Eventually, you find the same people in the trees of your various matches. This will be pointing toward birth family. Remember to consider all the information that you collected during the preparation phase.

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Unfortunately, while Ancestry may boast the biggest DNA database, most of the participants are doing it for the fun of it. They get their results and that's it, they never log on again.This can be frustrating when you have a great match, but cannot get a reply from them.

Also, to get a match requires they have uploaded a publicly available family tree of at least three generations. Very few people do this, so 90% of your matches are useless. Out of 500 "matches" I have only 8 that had given Ancestry enough information to produce a definite match. Only 3 of them replied to me. One did turn out to be a previously unknown half brother, but he is not interested in talking.

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A side benefit is that many of the family tree sites, such as MyHeritage, offer a ‘free’ account but it is limited to 3 generations. Works pretty well.

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Sites I have used –

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MyHeritage – works very well, easy to use, not as many documents in the database though. Free accounts (limited) offered, about $175/year for full access.

Ancestry – works very well, not as easy to use as MyHeritage, no useful limited (free) accounts but some query info provided, about $90 / 6 months.

FamilyTreeCircles – A blog type repository.

Crestleaf –

FamilyTreeNow –

Wikitree- limited to 1 unless signing on as a volunteer (not recommended for adoption searches).

FamilySearch – https://familysearch.org  - A nice free site with automated matching, slight bit of a learning curve but probably my favorite free site.

MooseRoots - excellent FREE research site

GEDMATCH - this one is critical, but again, responses are not to be expected

DNAGedmatch - a steep learning curve here, I have not fully explored it yet.

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There are a multitude of free software programs for this as well, although you will be without the automated matching capabilities. They are still quite useful for tracking information and developing leads. See Cyndi’s list – www.cyndislist.com

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Other resources may include

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Immigration records - Ellis Island Immigration records are available with a free registration - https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/

Arrest warrants - http://arre.st/

If you have a birth date - http://sortedbybirthdate.com/

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TIPS - Keep searching names, places, etc. but rearrange the data different ways. You will be surprised how much this makes a difference.

Ask for help if you get stuck, see our search angel page.

Use different search engines, they draw data from different sources.

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Call or send letters. You must be actively engaged. This is not a passive activity.

If you send a letter, include a self addressed, stamped envelope, and supply forms that can easily and quickly be filled out. The easier it is, the more likely you will get a reply.

Here is a sample I have used fairly successfully. Modify the red text to suit your search.

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Target address here                                                                  January 24, 2017

Some Town, Some State

90210
 

Mr. Peter Anthony,

I am a private researcher seeking to reunite a family. Your name has appeared several times in my research as a possible connection in my investigation. For this reason I decided to drop you a note to find out if you are the person who could assist me.

I am searching for a person possibly named “Peter Anthony”, born about 1957, in NY. The information I have seems to have originated with his son, possibly a “Gregory Anthony”?, who has a wife named “Maure”?.

 

This is the source of my information: (this comes from an adoption reunion website)

 

Kenneth Carangelo Gender: Male Adoptee Name : Peter Anthony

Adoption Date: 1958-10-31 Agency: Surrogates Court

Details:

Height: Tall Hair: Brown Eye Color: Brown Race: White Religion: Roman Catholic

Education: College Married: Yes Spouse Name: Maure Military: No Branch: Marines

Birth place: New York Adoption Location: New York Judge: Maximilian Moss

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If you can help in any manner, by providing any information at all, please contact me as soon as convenient. My contact information is given below.

If this is not applicable to you or the Anthony family as you are familiar with it, please return the enclosed postage paid envelope with the note inside. This will enable others to continue researching without bothering you further about this matter, as I will remove your name from the “possible contacts” listing.

To contact me:

• Mail – My address

• Email – (preferred) –My email

• Phone – My phone

 

Thank you for your time in this matter, it is very important to us to find this family and reunite them.

Sincerely, ME, Search Angel

 

(Sign this by hand here )-

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(second page to be returned)

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(To be returned in postage paid envelope if this notice is not applicable to you or your family)

 

Simply Circle a response and place in the mail, and thank you for your time.

 

1. I have no idea who any of these people are – (you will not be contacted again)

 

2. I will forward this to someone in the family who may know something, they will contact you if they do.

 

3. I know nothing but I think this person might: (please give full name, location, contact info, etc.)

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 - A nice hand written "thank you for your time" should go here -

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Depending on how well you write this, you may get a decent response rate. This is not critical, because if this letter reaches your target, you WILL get a response.

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Be prepared to send out many letters and buy lots of postage.  It is still cheap when you look at the cost of using a private investigator.

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Happy hunting..

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