Perhaps you’ve gotten older and realize that you miss having contact with a brother, cousin, or your parents. Tracking them down is difficult to do. There’s so much information available online but that also makes it difficult to sift through the information to find the person you’re looking for.
We’ve got a few suggestions for how to find lost relatives in Texas (and elsewhere).
Using the White Pages
It’s easy to look up the Texas White Pages by going to the relevant website, entering the person’s name and confirming what part of Texas you wish to search. When you find the person you’re looking for, their information will be given, usually with their full name, physical address, contact number, and age. In situations where their phone number is marked as unlisted, it will not be shown. The age is given to narrow the records down when there is more than one person with the same name in that part of Texas.
When you’re wanting to find someone connected to a relative, like their partner, then these details are also sometimes shown too, but not always. It depends on what is in the public record.
County Records
The local county clerk is responsible for collecting and keeping a record of relevant documents for the county. Generally, their office will maintain records of court appearances, weddings, probate dealings, property deeds, and other similar information. Database lookups are usually free with country searches, but expanded information may carry a small fee, depending on the county.
Googling Someone
It’s possible to look up a person by their performing a search on Google, Yahoo, Bing or another search engine. You’ll be able to see recent news coverage, blog posts, and various records on sites that collect them. It can be challenging to find someone when you only have their name to go on. If you know that they’re still in Texas, then be sure to include that in the search field by including either “Texas” or “TX” to help the search engine narrow down the results.
It’s also worth trying the search on more than one site, as they will each bring up different search results.
Checking on Social Media
A great many people have pages set up on Facebook now. In fact, you’ll find quite a few people with the same name as the relative that you’re looking for. You will need to open up the pages for each person and try to see if it matches the person you’re searching to find. Also use the “See more options” link, which expands out the people you can see with your current search. Outside of Facebook, Twitter is useful for people who are likely to publish regular tweets. Once finding the person, it’s usually possible to message them directly from the social media site. Be sure to request that you become their “friend” and “Like” their page because this helps avoid your private message going into the spam folders.
Looking for a long-lost relative can take time to yield a successful result, as people don’t always want to be found. If you run out of options, a private investigator may have access to more search tools that you do.