Sunday, June 24, 2007

Providing the right information for family genealogy research

Many emails asking for help have a lot of information showing that the person has clearly spent quality time researching to find someone presently living in Mexico. Often people are trying to get their Mexico family genealogy started and need to find a living relative. Over the next few blogs I'm going to talk about a few pieces of information that are frequently left out. I mention this because if you are going to several sources asking for assistance such as family genealogy web sites, you want to provide as much helpful information as possible.

One of the errors people make is not providing the name of the person they are looking for. I receive emails where the person says "I'm looking for someone." Someone is a hard person to find. It works much better if people will provide the person's full name up front. If there's an issue of trust, then don't approach strangers for assistance. I think, however, that some people are trying to be polite or not pushy so they don't include the person's complete name.

If you're going to email someone, put the vital information out there. If you are posting a message especially on a family genealogy web site, again put the information out there. You have no idea who might come across that web page. It could be another family member or someone who happens to have the one vital clue you need to find the person you are looking for.

So don't hold back. You don't have to tell every detail of the person's life but make sure you include the really important information, their complete name, city and state where you think they are or were living in Mexico.

Richard Villasana
Mexico Family History Expert

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