What is the best way to help my friend find an heir -- he is 95 years old 
and can only remeber seeing a cousin of his at his father's funeral about 
40 years ago. He wants to pass on his family history and many cool 
objects -- the history goes back to 1100 and is quite detailed, until 1911. I 
have names for the generations before and a social security number for 
the father of the man my friend saw at his Dad's funeral ... but no 
information after that except a name (and the name of all of this persons 
ancestors back to 1100)

Finding an heir can be a long and difficult process. There are a number of ways 
to discover distant family members, both free and for-pay services. 

Perhaps to start you will want to read a USA Today article on using online 
services to find people. This is from a regular column called "CyberSpeak" by 
Kim Komando. http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/2001-07-30-komando.htm
She suggests to start using the major search engines if you have a name to 
begin with. In your case it does not sound like you do.

If that is the case, then a good (free) way to start is with a site like 
RootsWeb.com. It provides a wealth of services to search for relatives, mostly 
by genealogy. You may want to go to their Social Security Death Index with the 
SSN of the father your friend saw. It returns a list of possible matches 
including last residence, birth and death date as well as quick links to search 
ancestry.com. Doing that search with the supposed match may help you find 
someone that you can contact. RootWeb also has a listing of genealogy websites 
that could be helpful in your search at http://www.rootsweb.com/~websites/

A pay for public records site is KnowX.com. They provide a large database of 
public records that is free to search, but charges to a per view on the records 
that are found. Once a name of a potential heir is found, you may want to 
search here to find their whereabouts or more information about them.

If you are still not having much luck, perhaps turn to Amerifind.com. They 
provide a variety of methods to find individuals depending on what information 
you have. They also provide a search service called Social Security Number 
Trace 2. This service "is an extended search for the person's address history, 
spouse and relatives.  May return listed phone numbers, driver license number 
and date of birth." Using your friend's SSN may provide the results you want. 
This is a paid for service and the search fee cost is $115.00. Find more 
infomation about it at http://www.amerifind.com/social.html#S2


Additional people searching websites:

RootsWeb Website
http://rootsweb.com/

Social Security Death Index
http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi

KnowX
http://www.knowx.com/

Amerifind
http://www.amerifind.com/

PeopleFind
http://www.peoplefind.com/locator_search.htm

1-800 US Search
http://www.1800ussearch.com/

Pacific Information Resources
http://www.pac-info.com/

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites
http://www.cyndislist.com/


Search terms used:
"find lost relative"
genealogy

---

Clarification of Answer by researcher-ga on 19 Apr 2002 11:41 PDT

If you are unhappy with the answer or would like more information in a specific 
area, please feel free to use the "Clarification" option to request such from 
the Researcher. In my opinion, with the information given, this is about as 
deep as a Researcher could go.

I did a search on those terms and already came up with the answers that 
your researcher gave. My hopes when using this service were that 1) the 
answer would be deeper than search results presented in a (admittedly 
quite nice) format and that the answers would have more authority than 
search results do. What seemed exciting to me was that Google had 
created a service that would help further sort out the junk flotsom and 
jetsam and weird commercial sites. Perhaps it is too much to expect for 
$10 -- but I won't pay $10 for a simple search that turns up USA Today 
articles and easy to find commercial sites (that are paid advertisers under 
most the search terms) Since I am not looking for geneology -- that is 
what I already have and since there is no indication that merely having my 
friend's social security number would help locate his first cousin, the 
answer is pretty weak.

Genealogy IS what you are looking for, caine. Heirs are Genealogy. 
(genealogy goes backwards and forwards) Apparently you only have it to 
1911. The 1910 US Census would be a good place to start finding other 
relatives of this person, then you could track them forward via the 1920 
and (brand new) 1930 census. 

After you find them in the 1930 census I would check SSDI to find death 
records and obituaries. I have used these methods to successfully trace 
lines downwards from the 1880s to living relatives. Good resources for 
the method i used are the California Birth/Death indexes (http://
www.vitalsearch.com - FREE, mostly) and Texas indexes (rootsweb)

Other than that, i'm not sure how more specific the researcher could have 
been - it's a pretty broad question you asked and there are not a lot of 
specifics. The "easiest" way would certainly be to use a commercial 
finding service.

I think your expectations were too high Caine. The core of your question was "What is 
the best way..." and the researcher gave you that information in a comprehensive and 
well formatted way. Perhaps if you had indicated the information you had found for 
yourself then the researcher would have answered differently or chosen to abandon the 
answer when duplication was evident. In the latter case your search fee would have 
given you better value for money than it did. However, I understand your 
disappointment and wish you luck with your quest.

I think Caine had you given a little more information in your query you may have gotten more specific suggestions.  One would like to know the location, 
at least the state or county of the funeral as that information would be very helpful. 
I would start with the known social security number and obtain a copy of the death certificate after obtaining the date and place of death from the social 
security index:
http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/vital/ssdi/main.htm
The death certificate can usually be ordered from the local county or state office.
Once I had the death certificate I would look for the obituary in the local paper and see who the survivors are and also the obituary may give where the 
survivors lived.  I would  then either firsthand go to the cemetery or have a volunteer or paid researcher check out the cemetery for descendants of your 
known individual.  If there are more deceased relatives you can also check out their obituaries or search the social security death index for more 
information on them.  Once  you have identified some individuals who are still surviving you can search some of the white page sites such as The 
Ultimate White Pages: http://www.theultimates.com/white/
Hope this helps.

I would recommend checking the Social Security Death Index fully
before paying a service. The 1-800 US Search Web site inital free
seach brings up my father and lists the age he would be today, had he
not died in 1993.

Also the Pacific Information Resources http://www.pac-info.com/ link
has been changed to http://www.searchsystems.net/