Find Your Lost Family

Do you have long lost family (in Australia or abroad) you want to reconnect with? Good news. Tracking down your long lost family like those in Find My Family Australia is easy enough to do.

Brad Argent from www.ancestry.com.au tells us how.

GETTING STARTED

“Long lost relatives are usually lost for a reason. Something happened somewhere in the past that has caused a disconnect in the family,” says Brad. “This doesn’t have to be a family feud - in most cases it isn’t – more often it’s that someone in the family decided to try their luck somewhere else in the world (like Australia) and the only available means of communication (via letter) wasn’t enough to ensure familial connections survived for more than a generation.”

Start off by tracing your family back to the point of disconnection. The best way to do this is to start with you and work backwards to your parents, grandparents, great grand parents, etc.

TALK TO OLDER FAMILY MEMBERS

Talking to older family members is also a great way to find the missing pieces to your puzzle. “Go to the oldest person in the family and ask them to tell you about their life,” suggests Brad. Key questions to ask are:
- When and where they were born?
- What was it like growing up then?
- Who were their brothers\sisters?
- What do they remember about their parents\grandparents?
- What kind of work did they do?

Brad also suggests recording their answers and letting them digress into other stories. “This is often where the real family jewels are – a great uncle who went to war, a distant cousin who had a castle in France, and so on,” he says. “When you’ve done some research, go back to them with your findings as it often triggers another memory and the story starts to unfold.”

Once you know the basic information like names, birthdates and birth places, you can start an extensive search into documents.

BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES REGISTRY
Your local registry should have most documents you need to help link your information. Click Here to find your local state registry office. If your family originated from another country, consider contacting registry departments abroad for the same information.

ANCESTRY.COM.AU

With over 24 million member trees available for search and over 940 million searchable Australian and UK family history records, www.ancestry.com.au is a great place to search. If you don’t find anything, Brad recommends you start it off by upploading your own family tree. “Putting your tree online will allow family members to find you. This is how it happened for me!”

Good luck! And if you’re successful, be sure to let us know about it!

Tune in to Find My Family Australia on LifeStyle.