Genealogists help coroners find families

Genealogists engage in family history research with a range of goals. Not all of them are trying to discover if there is really a John Smith on their family tree. Not all are trying to figure out whether the John Smith they find is the right John Smith.

Some are family reunion planners, family history tour planners, genetics specialists, heir searchers, house historians, lineage society experts, photography experts, Web designers and writers. And an increasing number of genealogists are doing research with a goal that would surprise just about everybody.

They are trying to find the living family members of deceased individuals whom coroners and medical examiners have been unable to locate. The identities of those individuals, in morgues and cemeteries, already are known, yet their relatives remain unidentified.

Genealogists in a group called Unclaimed Persons, which turned a year old in June, have put their skills to work to solve the problem experienced by coroners and medical examiners around the country. While the officials do try to locate family members of the dead, the job can exceed the capacity of their staffs or require different methods of researching.

This activity is not completely new to genealogists, but since the backlog of cases in many jurisdictions was brought to the attention of family historians by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, co-founder of rootstelevision.com and chief genealogical consultant to ancestry.com, the practice has been picking up steam.

Any genealogist can join Unclaimed Persons, which serves as the conduit for coroners and medical examiners to submit information on the cases and for genealogists to submit information they find to help solve them. The group solved 94 cases in California, Georgia, Florida and Texas during its first year.

Genealogists volunteering through Unclaimed Persons are asked never to contact family, friends or associates of the deceased because that should be done by the coroner. They code any information they leave about living people on the Unclaimed Persons Web site to protect their privacy. And they don't share information from the group with anyone out of respect for the deceased and their kin.

More than 500 volunteers have signed up with the group.

To get involved or learn more, visit www.unclaimed persons.org. Videos about Unclaimed Persons featured on rootstelevision.com can be viewed with a link on the Unclaimed Persons Web site. The group also has a presence on Facebook, but you must register to access it.

Reach Wevonneda Minis at 937-5705 or wminis@postand courier.com.