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I just recently have decided I want to find my birth mother. i am 22 and it was a closed adoption, however my adoptive parents gave me my birth mother's last name when i turned 18. I contacted the adoption agency that i was adopted through and they sent me paperwork but it is very confusing and there are a lot of fees. I am thinking with the internet there is an easier way to find her. I also have 3 biological brothers and one sister. I have pretty extensive information on my birth parents; height, hair color, age, medical history, etc.
so basically I feel since i know where i was born, my birth mother's last name, her age, i should be able to locate her. But am having trouble. any advice from someone with more experience in searching for people?
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Hi Alli,It's wonderful that you were able to get so much information from your parents. Kudos to them for understanding and helping.There are several places you can look to search for yourself. What sites have you tried? Names and ages are a great starting point. I do have a few questions for you - do you know where your birth parents lived before/around the time you were born? (Even a state is a good starting point, town/city is even more helpful.) Do you know THEIR parents' names? Do you know your biological siblings' names, and perhaps state(s) where they lived, as well? I began my search at ancestry.com - they offer a free week-long trial, which is a good way to get started without paying for any services. I also had some luck finding information at archives.com, though not quite as much on my birth family was available there. I had to look at old microfilm to view an obit for my maternal grandfather, who died in 1991, but that obit gave me my birth mother's married last name, as well as her sister's.Then it was back to ancestry.com and genealogybank.com to search for both under their married names. Thanks to the information I found online + via the obit, I was able to then google the local schools to figure out what high school my birth mother had attended. I saw her high school yearbook photo - it was the first time I'd seen my own features in someone else's face! In my case, my birth mother had passed a few years before my recent search, so I was able to find an online copy of her obituary at legacy.com. That gave me her her daughters' (my half-sisters') names. With that information and another google search for high schools near where she died, I was able to figure out which high school they went to. A quick search on classmates.com helped me find their yearbook photos and figure out their approximate ages. And if you can believe it, I was then able to use Facebook to double-check that I had definitely found the right family - my birth mother's sister had her three nieces as her FB "friends," so I knew I was on the right track.From there, some online white pages type sites helped me get an address for my birth mother's sister. I mailed a letter to her yesterday, and am breathlessly hoping for a reply.So, a combination of ancestry.com +archives.com +genealogybank.com +classmates.com +Google +Facebook +a handful of online white pagesis what worked for me. And there might have been another site or two I'm not recalling mixed in there as I worked to confirm the information that I'd found.I still have an active account on ancestry.com - if I can help you run some names there, I'd be happy to help. Just send me a private message and I'll do what I can.Best of luck to you.
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