I have some family documents for my aunt's husband's first wife's family; how to find descendants so I can send them?

Question

I have her jewelry (costume, but pretty), a late 1700s family bible, a very old photo album, and some source documents.  I don't just want to throw them away; I would want them if it were my family.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

If you have names of some of his relatives you may want to try Facebook.   If you don't know the names,  you may need to to do some searching on FamilySearch etc.

I don't have a Facebook account but somehow my husband  (now deceased) has one.  He had two brothers.  He had maintained contact with one brother but not the other.   At some point I put some family photos on Facebook for his known brother and got a "who are you and how are you related to me?" from the estranged brother's daughter who I knew only from genealogy work.  I have been able to share some information and items with that part of the family and actually initiate contact between two of the brothers.

I have used this with another set of family members successfully.  I just sent a private message,  introduced myself and my relationship to them , told them what I  would like to share and gave my contact information.   Then they can decide whether to get in touch.

I think the younger generation often is not involved in problems that caused a rift in their family and would like  information.  They are often on Facebook. It is very kind of you to be willing to share things that you have about a family member.

Comments

Thank you.  I hadn't thought of Facebook - I don't know why not, since I'm on it a lot!  I don't know a lot of names, but when I pulled out the boxes this afternoon, I did find a little information, so I think I'll have to do the FamilySearch thing first, then see if I can find anyone on Facebook.  I appreciate your help!

Answer 2

That's great that you want to share them with her family! If there's anyone you can connect with who's still in touch with any one from her family that might be the easiest way, but if that's not possible you could try finding people through geneological sites. Assuming that either the bible or the pictures have names/dates it should be possible to find who they were and probably descendants.

If you don't want to do the work of researching the people in the bible/photos there are facebook groups that help with this. I don't remember the exact name (maybe some one can help me out with it), but there's a fb group where you can take photos of your finds and they will try to research and track down some one who would be descended from those people.

If you are willing to do the research, you could try and find or create profiles for these people on wikitree/ancestry/familysearch and include a note that you have these documents avalible. If there's already a tree for that person you could contact the profile manager or owner of the tree and offer them the documents.

EDIT: The facebook group I was thinking of was "genealogy lost and found"

Comments

Thank you.  I'm not in contact with anyone - 20 years ago after my aunt died, my mother did try to find her husband's wife's family, and I thought she had - but if she did, she either had duplicates of the information or didn't send it to them, because I've still got a lot of stuff!  So I do at least have a couple of relatively recent names to look for now.  I'm suspecting that perhaps the descendants may not have a lot of interest in genealogy - there is nothing on the family names here on Wikitree, and the only information on FamilySearch has been added via "official" documents (death certificates, census records, etc) with no profile manager listed.  I do appreciate your suggestions - I'll definitely check out the Facebook group.