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The Social Security Administration has a free locator service. Even if you don’t know the person’s social security number, but you know the person’s complete date of birth and the last name is not too common, ask Social Security to forward your letter to the person. Social Security will not acknowledge receiving your letter, but you can send it by certified return receipt mail for proof of receipt. Neither will Social Security inform you that your letter has been forwarded to the person, but the person can reply to you directly. This resource has paid off for some. The word “adoption” and adoption-related terms such as “birth parent” tends to close doors. You need to indicate a specific humanitarian purpose or “for inheritance purposes.
City, county and state records can be browsed free or FAXed/mailed for a fee. Public Records include: birth certificates not sealed due to an adoption, birth indexes in some areas, birth announcements in newspaper back issues (from the newspaper “morgue” or public library), marriage, divorce, voter registrations, property owners, tax assessments, state library archives, church baptismal, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) Family History Center’s records, city and suburban directories, address-phone criss-cross directories, school yearbooks, computerized adoption search websites, microfilm databases, and directory assistance telephone operators who may do a computer search by name of the state or telephone district.
Voter registrations are public records in County Clerks’ offices. You can write for them, but it will take forever. In some areas, they are available on-line.
The National Census can be used to conduct a search by age. Send for “How the Census Bureau Can Be Used for Genealogical Research” by requesting it from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Dept. 33, Washington, DC 20402.
Last name search by computer, of everyone in the United States with their phone numbers is available free from public directory listings on Internet.
