Revisit Your Past
Revisit your past search for an old friend, lost school friend, an old flame, childhood and teenage first love. Tracing them to where they might be located these days is becoming a more common pursuit.
Were you a 60s wild child?
Image By John Hill – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
Especially when people are either in or approaching old age, and being confined more to staying at home. It’s very appealing to reconnect again with people and places you encountered along the path of life. Retracing the good bad and indifference. Yes sometimes your efforts in locating them can prove disappointing. But at least by tracing them serves as a reminder as to why you eventually lost contact.
The lure to revisit your past and all those memories
The good, bad, and the indifferent. Are all marks of respect to both you personally and those around you. Basking in pleasant memories of people who touched your life. First encounters with other children, first day at school, meeting their parents, first childhood sweetheart, trauma of moving to a new school or a new home and the loss of friends due to parents moving away. But we move on, different school, a new sweetheart, new groups of friends.
Reuniting you with your past. Places and where are those old buddies living in the world today?
Of course some memories were not so good and these inevitably crop up too. School bullies, greed, and selfishness to name but a few. But they also have a value in helping recreate certain plus and minus life experiences, which we learn from. As for where exactly are they living in the world today? Although not an easy task, we can find that out much easier today than say 50 years ago, pre internet.
Where do we start to find them?
What are the obstacles? No doubt the internet as appealing and for most people a logical place t begin. Unfortunately from our experience it rarely delivers a definitive result unless you are very lucky.
For example the first port of call:- Facebook.
Let’s take a female friend from way back who subsequently married as most of them do. You have then lost that critical surname, which quite abruptly ends the search. The only way to continue is by using lots of initiatives and find other people related to them who may be able to provide a married name. It’s not a problem for us as professional tracer at friends reconnected we encounter this on a daily basis. Problem number 2 with Facebook: If the individuals surname is “Smith” – forget it.
Where else to look? Luminary sites and its great pity we lost friends reunited.
There are many luminary sites nowadays, but all have one big limitation they only work in straight lines unfortunately. Often referred to as linear limitations. Like a computer going direct in a straight line but are not able to say: “hold on-hang on” or BUT.
Human initiative, questions and lateral thinking in computers has not arrived yet. Often we have traced an individual by stretching the boundaries: Didn’t she at one time move to Sheffield? Computers do not have the capacity to figure that out.
Other people search options
For the “would be sleuth” the place to begin your search (assuming you know the location they were born) is the local public library. In there you can usually find archive electoral registers dating back to the 1920s and 30s. Or there is a Kelly’s directory which listed everything local, residential and business going back to the 1920s. There are also local newspapers on microfiche! If you strike lucky almost all you need to know can be found in there.
Births Marriages divorces and Deaths information can be found online.
If its local you can obtain information from the local registrar office. Or there are many online services which covers this. If you make decent progress then there is a good chance you will find them.
Using a professional people tracer.
If you are finding the going is too tough, you might consider the services of a professional tracer. You could try us, But there are quite a few others out there.
Good luck with it!
