Finding someone.....with little info, very little!

[Preacher]

Okay, suppose you need to locate a person and all that you know about this person is that he/she has possession of her cousin's child. You know the name of the child's mother,presently not alive, and that is all you have to go on. How could you locate this nameless cousin who has the child!

[Quill]

Hire a great private detective. That or contact the Mormons. They're heavy into genealogy.

[Preacher]

I was thinking if the baby went with the cousin then it would be highly likely that the name of the cousin would be listed as an emergency contact person on a form somewhere, maybe on medical records or on college records.

[polymath]

One traditional practice was to record a family tree in a family bible. Some bibles have or had pages with blank forms for that very purpose. Others used blank pages for that purpose.

With a name and a general geographic area Cousin can be located comparatively easily. Today, with internal migration mobility, concerned agencies' databases trace persons' movements. Before the digital age, word of mouth traced persons locations, though mobility was far less common before the middle 20th century than it is today.

Anyway, with a name and approximate age most anyone can be traced by anyone anymore. The issue I see, again, is whether locating the cousin is meant to be problematic or straightfoward. If problematic, then the task of locating Cousin ought as a best practice correlate thematically to family themes. If straightfoward, then a brief process report should do.

Frankly, I know all my cousins and distant relatives and deceased ancestors whereabouts. We are global. My recent forebears documented our genealogy and birth and marriage and death records and locales. I incorporated them into a searchable database for my family. Fortunately, we don't number into an expansive family tree and the trail goes cold early 19th century, though we know who our forebears are. Their emigrations from foreign locales aren't as clearly documented as more recent events.

[Preacher]

As i thought it over i realized that if the cousin has the baby it follows logically that the cousin would be the closest relative, meaning that in all probability her name and location would appear on records that list a next of kin, such as any medical records or even college records. There is a search feature out there that allows you to find the email of college students. Using that, you can plug in the dead girl's name and find out what college she went to. From there, it is a matter of accessing the records in the registrar. A quick slip inside with the cleaning crew would allow access to the office and the records.

[sierramcconnell]

Heck, in this day and age, if you knew how to log into the dead mother's college email, you could get her cousin's information if they actively talked. There's facebook, twitter, and other options as well. Computers are full of information that even when you delete can be restored. Norton Recovery and all that. If she meant for the cousin to be secret...I'm sure there would be something left behind...an email. A print out. A bible registry as mentioned above.

[mnaylor3]

You don't. They find you. Or, at least, someone with information about that child finds you.