PRIVACY CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE GENEALOGY RESEARCHER : SENIORS ARE THE TARGET OF CRIMINALS : GRANDPARENT and LOVE SCAMS

PRIVACY CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE GENEALOGY RESEARCHER

It seems to me people are willingly - even joyfully - in the spirit of trust and sharing - giving over information that anyone can access.  This is simply not acceptable in today's world.

I've never posted my research findings on any database and ask that others who receive information from me do not either. Even those databases that suggest you only post the dead can easily be linked to those who are alive. In particular, death certificates revealing cause of death on Find A Grave tm are beyond irksome; no privacy for the dead? Or the family of the dead?

Then there are the prompts: for you to share photos and memories to the world. You really shouldn't... 

Sadly, criminals are using all these details to find and target individuals.

Several years ago a neighbor of mine told me his parents had sent their entire life savings to Mexico because a caller told them that their grandson had gone to a wedding there of one of his frat brothers from UCLA and had gotten drunk and in trouble.  This was the bribe the officials needed to let him out of jail there, the caller said.  Why linger in a rotten jail for years, pay Mexican lawyers, ruin his college career and life?  The caller knew the grandson's name, his fraternity, their names, and many other details that can be found on genealogy databases.

Would it be even more convincing if the caller knew what a person died of or what grandma looked like? Claimed to be at an event that you posted about?

Perhaps even more horrendous was the scam that a senior friend of mine - an intelligent woman with an education and years of experience as a teacher - got caught up in.  She had sent a significant amount of money to a middle-man/banker/broker in another country, knowing that the country is full of corruption, and did so on a monthly basis for two years. The purpose was in order to get a man out of that country. She had met the man in person. They talked about getting married. They were frequently in contact. I didn't ask why he didn't just travel to the United States on a tourist Visa and get married here or why she thought such a large sum was needed. Sure there were serious questions I had.  

However, came the day that she had no more money to send and she called her potential husband and told him so.  At that point the plan was for him to travel to Mexico. He was silent on the other end.  The middle-man/broker/banker was angry and told her she would not get any money back, having missed a payment.  A family member of hers - a business executive yet - believed in this story enough to offer to send the money. However, within a couple days she was getting text messages from two unknown parties - phone numbers from two different states in the U.S. but men with accents from this other country - and one said "Your man is married and his wife has put a contract out to execute you. But if you send me $2000 I will not kill you." This amount was even more than the monthly payment she had been making. These callers had her phone number, they knew her name, they knew she was a teacher. 

Of course this had to be connected to the man she thought to marry. She called the local police who told her to block the number and there was nothing they could do about the money sent to another country. Sadly, because this is a love scam, she believed the execution threat was a scam but not the monthly payments.  She went back to work in order to continue earning enough. 

Unfortunately there are those criminals who target people who believe in love and are kind and generous. These criminals leave you broke, heartbroken, and fearful.

Please - I caution you - be especially careful when the genealogy database prompting you to give up your photos and memories and much else - HAS NO OPTION FOR YOU TO TAKE THOSE THINGS DOWN.

2025 C Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO TO LOCATE SOMEONE CIRCA 1960? PHONE BOOKS! GOT ANY? DONATE THEM TO A GENEALOGY LIBRARY

Phone books are fragile, the paper used isn't the best. I'm not sure exactly when phone books went extinct but there was a time where, if you had a phone. now called a LAND LINE, you got a phone book update once a year.  The last time I got a phone book was ????? and it was a yellow pages. As the years went by, you could usually choose to have your number UNLISTED!  

With the Internet there are many sites that help you locate a person, their address, possibly their phone number and their e-mail.  WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION.

There is misinformation on the Internet about me  So...

Check the library closest to where your ancestors lived to see if they have a phone book collection.  Los Angeles Public library has some phone books for places other than Los Angeles.

If you have old phone books consider donating them to a Genealogy Library!

C 2024 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved

THE WONDERFUL MODERN PORTRAITS OF HISTORICAL PERSONALITIES BY ROYALTY NOW : SUMMER PHOTO PROJECT

https://www.royaltynowstudios.com/    Be sure to link to Becca's blog too..

I just love the work of Royalty Now studios and I suggest you link over to her George Washington history and portrait.  When you get to the very end you'll see what he would look like if he were President of the United States now.

ROYALTY NOW YOUTUBE STATION   Harriet Tubman,  Mary Queen of Scots, Vincent Van Gogh and many more.

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PRESERVE YOUR OWN PHOTO's...

Be sure that you have them in plastic or paper that does not have acid in it.  You can usually purchase the right stuff at art supply stores. It's usually advertised as 'archival."

Go ahead and photograph your photographs, upload them, but think carefully about putting any photos on the Internet or uploading them to databases. I know some of them are prompting you to upload and add to family charts.  Read the fine print and be sure that you retain the copyright as well as the right to remove those images that belong to you and your family.

A CIGARETTE BUTT - DNA - FACE REVEAL - PRIVACY

An arrest?  Social Justice?  Disability?  Privacy?  

1950 CENSUS! BABY BOOMERS and SPECIAL INFANT BABY COUNT!

BABY BOOMERS! 

ANYONE BORN BETWEEN 1946 and 1964 is considered to be a BABY BOOMER!  

Since the enumerators were out there collecting information that would present a statistical body of information, a snapshot of the United States on April 1, 1950, what about all those babies born between January 1, 1950, and March 31, 1950?

IMPORTANT UPDATE: On APRIL 2nd, I WENT INTO THE NARA SITE AGAIN and LEARNED THAT THE INFANT CARDS HAD BEEN THROWN AWAY AT SOME TIME BACK IN THE DAY and so we will not be able to find them anywhere on the NARA site. I apologize for my misleading you with the original post as below.  However, I spent an hour on the site myself and then went back to the earliest mention of these cards and printed out the explanatory essay about the cards from the site thinking I just needed a break. Later, relaxing, I read the print out. That the cards WOULD NOT BE PART OF THE RELEASE OF THE 1950 CENSUS was on page 4 of 5 about them and blended into a paragraph.  That should have been the first thing NARA mentioned about the cards on the top of page 1. They are of course, part of the history of the census, and were used all those years ago for a statistical analysis, which can be interesting for other reasons.

The explaination for why they were thrown out is given this way:  The census bureau was checking these cards against REGISTERED BIRTHS IN EACH STATE.  As such they were looking to find out how many babies in a three month sample were born and not registered for birth in the first place.  Apparently, there was a good chance that a baby born in the 1950's despite the emphasis on VITAL RECORD KEEPING, was never registered by its parents. Therefore, if you know or suspect or wonder if your ancestor may have had a baby in 1950, the first thing you might do is check to see if the birth was registered; the baby still might have been born, been unregistered, and then died before April 1, 1950. Also there is a remark that some babies born in 1949 (my guess is December 1949) were also missed.

So those of us who have experienced difficulties in our research because we could not find any evidence of a birth via vital records or church baptismal records further back in history, perhaps because a certain county or state did not require it, must be a bit surprised by this.  There are many people alive who had to apply for a birth certificate later in life; These are titled as "Delayed" in county archives.

 
According to the NARA essay, some babies (called live births) were missed in 1950 because the baby had been born but died, or because the baby was born in a rural area, or because the baby moved with its family.

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A SPECIAL INFANT CARD WAS FILLED OUT!

And this isn't all. There were actually three forms to potentially be filled out. The government wanted to know how many live births the woman had*** From the questions, we can tell that the United States government wanted to know how that child was being supported. The UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU web site, previously linked to, has this PDF file with all three and the instructions. UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU SPECIAL BABY COUNT 1950

Full information about the parents including the mother's maiden name, the name of the hospital where the child was born, and the child's father's occupation, including what industry he worked in Sexism alert! The education of the mother was asked but NOT HER EMPLOYMENT.  

WHAT ABOUT A WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO A CHILD THAT SHE GAVE UP FOR ADOPTION? (My question, not theirs!)

****Let's just say that it's my guess that most women who did so, perhaps before they were married to the person they were married to in 1950, would not put that child down on this form.  It's my guess that a typical American at the time was both far more trusting of the government than people today are and would be more cooperative but also have a far greater sense of their right to personal and medical privacy. Further adoptions were Closed if they were legal.

I can't wait to find a child that was stolen from a family!  (UPDATE: This census will not help.)

UPDATE March 25, 2022 : The question was only be asked of women who are married or who have been married and are separated or divorced....

Click on the tab  Genealogy Help - 1950 Census to bring up the series!

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THIS INFORMATION COULD HAVE BEEN BE VALUABLE TO GENEALOGIST and ANYONE INTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF WOMEN!

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

WHAT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES HAS TO SAY ABOUT THE 1950 CENSUS

ARCHIVES GOV : 1950 CENSUS ON TRACK!   The good news is that while Covid had some impact National Archives workers had started working on this as soon as the 1940 was released and had already digitalized most all the images.

EXCERPT: While most of the digitalization was complete, the work of matching images to the correct enumeration districts had not started before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the National Archives Building, where the work was supposed to be done.

All staff working with census data need special clearances because the information is restricted until the public release, and they need the ability to access the images that are stored on a secure server.  With employees working at home and the 2022 deadline looming the approach to this part of the project had to be completely reimaged in terms of a remote workforce.  Kluskens has also been working on preparing family historians for this release  Her long career at the National Archives means that she brings a wealth of experience and understanding to the records. She has been sharing that with an online audience through a 1950 census blog post series on HISTORY HUB.

Searching for HISTORY HUB and Kluskens I brought up some of her posts.  You can do this and likely there will be more to read.

HISTORY HUB and Kluskens as NATIONAL ARCHIVES SEARCH

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

1950 CENSUS UPDATE - WHAT THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU HAS TO SAY ABOUT COVERAGE - INCLUDES GUAM, AMERICAN SAMOA, PUERTO RICO, VIRGIN ISLANDS

APRIL 1 2022 is the official release date or the United States 1950 census. I know we are all just yearning for that day.  But because the numbers of people counted is tremendously more than the 1940 census, what really can we expect?

Here is what the official U.S. Census page has to say:

CENSUS GOV - UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU - INCLUDED INFO ON PAST CENSUS

EXCERPT: The 1950 census encompassed the continental United States, the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, American Samoa, the Canal Zone, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands of the United States, and some of the smaller island territories.

Americans aboard were enumerated for the first time in 1950...

A new survey on residential financing...

BRITAIN AND A TRANSGENDER INCLUSIVE 2021 CENSUS

Transgenderism is at issue in Great Britain when it comes to census taking. In the last several months the issue of asking a person if their gender is currently what it was at their birth is quite controversial.  After reading through the development of the questions I chose this article for you to read:

ONS GOV UK CENSUS

There have been court actions which have furthered the discussion and I am not sure that the discussion has ended.  The very sensitive issue does come down to choice.  A person may consider themselves to be transgender but wanting to officially out themselves on a government document is something to think about.

Census' exist for statistic making, generally thought to understand populations when it comes to representation in government as well as funding for various purposes.

Frankly, having witnessed how many people want to dodge census takers in the United States and in recent times, I'd say trust that information is confidential is not so good.

BLACKSTONE BOUGHT ANCESTRY FOR NEAR FIVE BILLION DOLLARS : HOW PRIVATE IS YOUR DNA ?

LATIMES WHAT MIGHT Blackstone DO WITH ANCESTY'S DNA DATA 

The PAPER version of this article which appeared in the LA Times on April 13, 20121 by David Lazarus was called  "What Might Blackstone Do With Ancestry's DNA Data?"  On line, where it is showing up in Spanish, it is called  "Why Would A Company Invest Millions To Buy Ancestry, If It Is Not Interested In The DNA Data Of Its Users?"

Excerpt: He and other bioethicists were quick to note that existing federal medical privacu laws do not apply to genealogy sites.  These companies are basically free to do whatever they want with people's genetic data.

"A lot of these sites are bait and hoax," Caplan said.  "They offer interesting content, but what they're really looking for is your DNA."

So take the industry's genetic privacy guarantees with a grain of salt.  These companies operate largely in the shadows and their activities are limited almost exclusively by an honor system."

***

But nearly every expert spoke with cited  the partnership  announced in 2018 between Ancestry rival 23andme and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.

***

This is a very important article and if you have allowed your DNA to be submitted to ANY genealogy site, I agree with the journalist who wrote the article.  You have no protection and no company spends billions for data they are not going to use.

REMEMBER THAT GENEALOGY DOES NOT DEPEND ON YOUR DNA. Genealogy depends on DOCUMENTS.

DATA MINING THE DECEASED : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

DATA MINING THE DECEASED : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

Film Maker Julia Creet is curious and a tad skeptical. She is asking questions you ought to.

Are you part of a "captive biomedical community" because you were so eager for your DNA data results that you didn't read the fine print? 

What happens when you submit spit samples to a huge company and the data gets sold and resold? Maybe you can find out if you're Jewish but it won't give you grandma's name. **

Iceland is the big example. Quite genetically related, it's easy to meet and marry a cousin there and young couples don't want to. Presumed Consent of the Icelandic population meant that the data got sold and sold and as of the film production date was in the hands of a company called Amgen. The Icelandic database contains just about every person in Iceland.

Besides if you get real far back your chart will become subject to Pedigree Collapse (a small starter population means you are related to everyone in some way.) And if you're transgender how much do you care about being descended from Vikings?

Refresher: you get your genetics from 1/2 your parents. 1/4 your grandparents. 1/8 your great grandparents. ... Really going so far back can mean nothing at all about your personal genetic composition.

One in four people in the United States are registered with free FamilySearch, owned by the premier force in genealogy in modern times, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint's - LDS. Members trust them. Should you?

What about when members baptised Jewish Holocaust victim Anne Frank or Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by terrorists, after their deaths? Jews were not happy about that.

Do you agree to promote LDS when you use FamilySearch? What if you are not Christian? What if you are Pagan? If you upload documents that reveal your religion will it haunt you someday when Thought Police show up at your door? Missionary?

Ancestry, the genealogy database company (not related to this blog) is also extremely popular but costs. Some of the data - collected with the free labor of volunteers - is shared between these two giants and sold.

We really must ask more questions.

**it is possible that by locating others who share your genetics and collaborating you may share the documents that were missing and caused you to hit into a brick wall.

Note: Not everyone wants to spend eternity with the family they knew on earth and certainly not the husband or wife they had on earth. These eternally intact relationships are promised by LDS to those members who perform rituals called Ordinances within Temples. Locating ancestors for this purpose is the given reason for the LDS fixation on genealogy. I personally am into reincarnation and don't think we are in the same Soul Group for eternity. I have performed genealogy with and for LDS members, respect they have a right to their beliefs, and avoid discussion of religion. When needing to go into databases for members only, I have received the assistance of Family History Library volunteers.

C 2021 - 2025 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved

ETHICAL USE OF DNA DATABASES BEHIND CAPTURE OF GOLDEN STATE KILLER - EXCELLENT ARTICLE FROM LA TIMES (UPDATED APRIL 2021)

The article by Paige St John which begins on the front page of the Los Angeles Times,  paper edition, dated December 10th, is detailed and excellent but at this moment I haven't found a link for it.  In my labels below I've listed the companies that figure in the process in which the killer's DNA matched others.  The Golden State Killer mystery was one that many a professional and citizen sleuth tried to solve. No doubt he needed to be caught.  But we all wonder if our DNA that we so willfully submit for the purposes of meeting long lost relatives and solving genealogy research problems, is really as private and secure as we desire.

I may have mentioned that I've never taken a DNA test myself.  My own research is off and on.  There are things that took many years for me to find, again not looking every day for twenty years but still.  

I remember the day I sat next to a new researcher at a Family History Center who got one spool of film and went back six generations in her German heritage family in that afternoon.  Because I was working on ancestors in a Central - Eastern European country and the records were sloppy and didn't have details of the German records it has taken me many years to get back close to 1800. I'm forever interested but not obsessed.

And so you must ask yourself what you are giving up about yourself in hopes of gaining in research.

I will search for this article again in the near future, hoping it's considered important enough to have a link.  If not, search out the paper edition.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

Here is the link LA TIMES UNTOLD STORY OF HOW THE GOLDEN STATE KILLER WAS FOUND

WHAT's NEW WITH FAMILY SEARCH? FACIAL RECOGNITION

FamilySearch has come up with a new feature that I suggest you ignore, the invitation to upload not only the photos of your ancestors for the world to see, but photos of your own face. Of course this will be coordinated with your account and the research you're doing which is supposed to begin with you and your own family. Perhaps you would like to totally give away your privacy and that of those connected to you by also willingly linking your DNA results.

It looks like fun - a game - and is promoted as such -  aren't we all warm and fuzzy? - but what really is happening here?  You do know that the company owns the rights to your research and all else you post right?  Read the fine print.  It will become part of "Intellectual Preserve."  Do they or will they sell your information.  Currently they say they won't but in the future?

As intentions besides the research of and preservation of genealogy and family history research become more common, I see the dark side.

One of the many reasons people used to hire a genealogist was for the preservation of their privacy.  Family History and genealogy books and charts a professional composed were just for family, people you knew, a few copies.  Many published books eliminated the latest generation, so only if you could prove the links to those - deceased - listed - was it valuable to you.

Perhaps in some parts of the country people still leave their doors unlocked and welcome neighbors to come on in.  There is absolutely no way for FamilySearch to know the reasons why certain criminally minded people - stalkers - Identity thieves - and rapists -  and the all too common people who want to get to know you without you knowing it - use their databases. To be fair, no genealogy database offers privacy once you post, so I suggest you print out or save your research elsewhere, whatever you use.

Take it from someone who has been stalked by someone who had a fantasy that he was dating me, someone who went up to people he saw talking to me, claiming to be my "friend" and asking personal questions, including where I worked.  Come now - when someone is your friend then you told them - not some gossip.

Or perhaps consider my neighbor down the street whose parents lost their entire life savings when they wired it to Mexico.  The person who called them know their names, the name of their grand-son, where he went to college and that he was on break.  They said he had gone to Mexico to a friend's wedding, mentioning a name that also sounded familiar to them, it had gotten too wild, and he was sitting in a prison, which was going to cost them legal fees, ruin his education, and his reputation.  All lies. For $40,000 he could be let out.  So they sent the money. Talking about this, it is likely the thieves used genealogy databases as part of their research about this elderly couple. They lived in fear when they learned the truth that the criminals would come to their house.

Think three times about uploading your photos and if someone else in your family does this without your permission, well, I'd dump them.  That's totally disrespectful.

C  2020 Ancestry Worship Genealogy 

ARE DNA TESTING COMPANIES GOING TO GO BUST? SEEMS THE DNA TESTING BOOM IS OVER

YAHOO FINANCE : ONCE HOT DNA TESTING article by Daniel Roberts

Excerpt: It isn't just 23andme. DNA tests went boom in 2018 with the number of consumers who had bought one doubling to 25 million, now sales have gone bust.

MIT Technology Review estimates that the largest DNA test players sold just 4 million to 6 million DNA tests in 2019, an industry growth rate of 20 %, the slowest year for the industry ever.

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I have never done my DNA and to my knowledge, neither has anyone in my family.  These companies and their owners have gotten rich, but the aspect of privacy invasion and your data no longer being yours (after about 20 years but currently for the use of law enforcement) is also in my opinion an aspect of the decline in interest.  Further while DNA can help you if you're truly blocked, sometimes it's impatience or amateur genealogy that's the issue.  Currently I have a friend who is stuck due to a common name and reportage of birth place different on three different census in the 1800's.  I told her I've seen death certificates from the 1940's and before in which children do not know their mother's maiden name.

THE MAN WITH THE NATIVE AMERICAN DATABASE and FREE RESEARCH

Perhaps it's the synchronicity of having a couple potential clients who want to prove Native American ancestry, but the other day, just sitting on a bench outside a restaurant, I met a man who introduced himself and said he was a Native American genealogy expert.  That's not what the outside of his van said, but he handed me his card proving he was accepted into a tribe and said it had taken him 15 years to be accepted.

His route of research was not a steady plan of documentation but I don't hold that against anyone. Most of us have had to go around an individual to find them again such as following a brother or sister or other relative to get back a generation or so.

Then this man blew me away by saying he had a personal database of HALF A MILLION NAMES which he had posted but kept private on a contributory genealogy database you all know of.  He said he paid high yearly fees to have just about everything they offered. Further he said that ALL NATIVE AMERICAN ARE RELATED and HE CAN PROVE THAT.

The more he talked the less convinced I became. Besides the task of listing half a million names, I doubted the privacy he claimed to have.  Mostly I feared that a lot of people who are lazy genealogy hobbyists or simply ignorant will take his word for it and never bother to do the proofing.

I told him I was a genealogist but he wasn't interested in my story, just impressing me with his.

The tribe he is a member of gave him the card saying he was 5/32nd blood. We all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and 16 great great grandparents, and thirty two great great great grandparents.  A simplistic example of how one gets to be 5/32nds Native American would be that five of the 32 great great great grandparents were Native American.  But there are other combinations since it's possible that some or all of these many people in his genetics are some part Native American too.

OK, he looked convincingly Native.  He had studied the tribe and taken on some of their cultural attributes such as, he said, doing free genealogy research - for those who wouldn't mind their charts also being in his database.

Early in the conversation I'd mentioned preliminary research into the tribes of these two people who say they want to know their heritage. He wanted me to tell them their names. It would not be professional for me to divulge this. I felt put on the spot. I did not.

He went into the restaurant before me and that was the end of the encounter.

C 2019  Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

GOLDEN STATE KILLER CAPTURE? DNA INFORMATION FROM PRIVATE SHARE DATABASES?

The recent capture of The Golden State Killer - a serial killer responsible for many murders and even more rapes - that they know about - and based on DNA evidence - put me and many others into a spin.  Well, the first thing is that the man captured may have his day in court but basically he has already been outed, tried, and convicted, by the media and THAT IS NOT WHAT THE UNITED STATES IS ALL ABOUT.  Or is it?


Here in the U.S. we must assume innocence and prove guilt.  It's just the opposite in other countries.  Though this is and has long been one of the most important open cases and we as a people want justice, I watched televised news, YouTube reportages, and read a dozen articles piggybacking on each other about the case.  At first while the use of DNA genealogy databases had been used came up, leaving us to wonder WHICH ONE, first came DENIALS by a couple of them that they HAD NOT COOPERATED WITH INVESTIGATIONS.


Well, it's easy enough to set yourself up - or borrow someone else's - to get in and use the account pretending that all you're interested in is more people to invite to that family reunion because SO MUCH depends on what we used to call "Scout's Honor."


So of course I wanted to know WHICH ONE and finally was revealed.  GEDMATCH
NBC NEWS - GOLDEN STATE SUSPET SPARKS DNA SITE PRIVACY QUESTIONS  by Erik Ortiz


YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO TAKE A DNA TEST, have the results just for yourself, and not have them included in ANY database, not at all, from the start. 
This is not however the first or only time the use of DNA databases has been used.
For instance, statistics are computed using them, which I suppose the researchers just don't think is personal enough to have to ask each individual.


Reading around the investigative work that lead to the arrest, it's also clear that they didn't just use GENEALOGY rather than LAW ENFORCEMENT databases, they also had to cull some DNA from the suspect and though it has not been described it's clear they were in his garbage cans and the DNA could be from bodily substances such as hair, saliva, and so on.
Makes you think three times about throwing out those fast food containers.


Personally, this put my own DNA  research on hold.
And though it sounds like it will be difficult for the man to argue he is innocent, let's hold onto that INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY that is so important in defining what is American!  Because that and our PRIVACY RIGHTS are being demolished.


C 2018 All Rights Reserved.  Ancestry Worship Genealogy

FORENSIC GENEALOGY?

Forensic Genealogy is the use of genealogy in order to locate missing people and solve crimes, a juicy subject.

I recently attended a lecture by a well regarded and experienced Forensic Genealogist. She told about doing numerous family charts in order to locate someone who might know where a woman who had gone missing might be.  This was not exactly a teenage runaway situation.  There had been a remarriage, a step-parent, and the person intentionally cut off from everyone.  That's difficult to do.  Maybe her reasons wouldn't seem rational to you or me, but the Forensic Genealogist sought to give her family "closure." And they got it.  She had lived for many years but had commit suicide.  She had done what many people do when they want to get lost.  She had assumed the identity of a person who had died who was about her age. Other than assume this identity, and gather together the paperwork she would need to prove who she was and keep her cover, she was never involved in any other "criminal" activity.  I looked at some web sites that tied to the Forensic Genealogist's and some of them started out using the word "Criminal" because of "Identity Theft" on this person who needed to get lost as she saw it, and I sort of cringed. 

While listening to the lecture I thought about Missing Persons.

Tell me, if YOU hated your family, maybe had a terrible childhood, and you wanted to get lost, if you never wanted to hear from them again, what would you do?  Expect the FBI or CIA to create a new ID for you?  Law enforcement does those things for people in Witness Protection Programs sometimes. Tombstone websites would certainly make locating someone your age who died more accessible to you, easier than prowling cemeteries in other towns by yourself!

It turned out that yes, there was ONE person, a distant family member, who had contact with her and kept her secret for many years. That he kept her secret makes me think that she had some good reasons to leave and be in hiding.  My guess, the stepfather molested her.


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