half brother and half sister

[trincarl]

I reconnected with my father and found out I have a half brother and sister by two different women.  Needless to say, My father was never married.  He does know the names of the children  and their mothers but the ages of the children he is not clear about.  One could be 8 and the other 22.  I believe that one of the women who had my half brother lost custody of her son and she was committed mentally ill. How can I find my siblings?

[dawnsh]

Hi trincarl

Welcome to Rootschat 

We have a 'no living people' policy here so we can only give you general advice.

If you have the names of the children and their mothers you should check the General Register Office birth index for England & Wales.

It is available online with a subscription through FindMyPast or Ancestry. If you don't have a subscription you should try your local library as many of them offer free access at the library.

The other site to recommend which you can use at home is www.freebmd.org.uk which is a volunteer project and they haven't transcribed all the data yet. Apart from that the project is only planned at the moment to go up to 1983.

FindMyPast & Ancestry have the details up to 2007.

It might be easier if you are new to these sites to try looking for your own birth registration to see how that was recorded: do you have your fathers surname for example or is your birth recorded under your mothers name? This could have a bearing on how the other children are recorded. You would need their mothers surnames if your fasthers surname was not used when the births were registered.

Other than that there are links here which could be useful

Topic: Tracing Living Relatives
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,261434.0.html
and
Topic: Searching for living relatives and Rootschat
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,142443.0.html

Good luck!

Dawn

[iolaus]

If you know the name for the 22 year old I'd send messages on facebook for everyone with that name a 'this may sound weird but I'm trying to contact a XXX whose father was YYYYY.  If this is you, or you can help please let me know.  If it's not you sorry for bothering you'

I had surprisingly good results with facebook when looking for relations of my grandmother.  I sent a message to those with her maiden name living in the town she was born in, got a reply back from one saying 'I don't know of an Isabella but she must be related as all the Surname in the town are' - we got chatting as to who his father and grandfather were - his grandfather was my grandmother's youngest brother and was under the impression that my grandmother had died (well that was what he had told his son - that he'd had two sisters both had died young) - what I suspect happened was that as he was only 8 or 9 when my grandmother got pregnant, out of wedlock and then kept the child, he had been told she had died

[groom]

It might also be worth looking for the 22 year old on the electoral registers in the place they were last heard of.

Are you sure your father doesn't have any more details eg did he have to pay maintenance or did he have nothing to do with them after their birth?

[trincarl]

I could try the facebook suggestion, great idea.  As far as the electoral registers idea.  I am not sure if this will work as I live in US and not sure if we even have that option to search.  My dad did not keep in touch with any one of his children so him giving me more information is probably out of the question.  Thanks so much. I feel like I am getting closer.

[trincarl]

Oh I see what you mean by electoral registers. In USA this is called intelius or other search engine. I have tried to look on there. One thing I did find, is that the mother of my half brother is listed on mncourt cases. And her court story is quite interesting. saying that both her son and daughter were taken away due to neglect.

[groom]

That could make it harder if they were taken away and adopted, as their names may have been changed.

Can I suggest that you update your profile on here to say that you live in the US? That way people won't suggest that you look in the wrong place ie assume that you are looking in the UK.