Tracing birth parents is easy if you have the key information you need to find them. In this video Dave Oates, head researcher at FinderMonkey and author of “Long Lost Family Tracing” talks about the key information and where you can get it from.
So what’s the key information you need to trace your birth parents?
It is obvious to say but you need to know their name, when someone has been adopted they might not have access to this information so they would need to have a look at their original birth certificate. You can obtain your own birth certificate or other people’s birth certificates online.
On your birth certificate will be at the least your birth mothers first name and maiden name and, if married, her married name. It might have your father’s name and it will also have an address. Once you have your birth parents names, you can obtain their birth certificates and this will tell you their dates of birth. If you are specifically looking for your birth mother, you may have to check through marriage records in order to locate her current surname.
If someone is tracing their birth mother or searching for their birth father who they haven’t seem for up to 30 years ago, what information do they need to supply to Dave to for him to be able to locate them?
Tracing birth parents depends on cross referencing different points of information. Often people think they don’t have enough information; they might have a name but not a date of birth or an old address and a name etc. What we try and do is confirm a birth record to make sure we are tracing the right person.
If you have the name of your birth parents what do you do next?
On the birth certificate will be an old address too, this will give you an area of the country to start your searches in. As you can see you can obtain a lot of information through access to birth certificates . There are many websites that offer access to birth certificates in the UK, expect to pay around £10 for a copy of a certificate.
Tracing birth parents is about cross referencing different facts, before you start tracing them you have to gather as many facts about them as you can, speak to people if you can. This isn’t always possible as it can cause problems will your existing family, if you are looking for birth parents whom you haven’t seen for a number of years but if it is possible then you should ask as many questions as you can. Building up your knowledge about your birth parents will help you to trace them in the long run.
This video about tracing birth parents is part of a series of videos that Dave has done about various aspects of tracing people in the UK. Please feel free to check back from time to time as additional videos are added.
Remember, we’re happy to offer you any advice we can in relation to this matter. Good luck with tracing birth parents.