Finding Public Information

While the internet has opened up access to literally millions upon millions of web pages and useful information sites, unless you actually know where to look it can be very difficult to find the information which you are after. So where do you start and how do you actually use the information you might find?

If you are at all unsure about where to start, the US Census Finder website is as good a place as any!

This website has just about everything that you will ever need to trace a person, whether you are looking for a long lost friend, a relative or just checking your family tree. The information which is available from the US Census should give you a great chance of being successful in your search, but what do you do after you have the basic information?

Once you have even the most basic piece of information from the Census site it is really just a matter of logging onto local newspaper and state record sites in that area and doing a little digging. Obituaries are often listed in the more popular local newspapers and a quick search for an old relative who died may well show up some useful leads.

Very often these ads will mention the name of children of the deceased, possibly your relatives, and this can then bring you more chance of actually finding surviving relatives. There are also many other websites which you can access such as Graveyards online which lists a massive array of people buried in countries such as the US, legal readings which have to be placed in newspapers by law as well as tracing the owners and former owners of a home, the details of which have to be made available to the public by law.

If you have enough time and enough interest it can be very fulfilling to search for and find members of your family tree – but be very open minded about what you might find!

About the author
Andreas co-founded Xavier Media® in 1996 and has since been involved in all kinds of development, marketing and making money online.