Genealogists can do some pretty amazing things. Today, I learned about a very interesting way in which genealogists can put their skills to use. I also learned about a problem that I had no idea existed until today. The problem is that occasionally when a person dies, no family appears to claim their body. Genealogists have stepped up to the plate to offer their assistance in finding the next of kin for these unclaimed persons.
I learned about the problem of unclaimed persons through the web site unclaimedpersons.org, which is a resource where coroners seeking assistance with unclaimed persons can connect with volunteer genealogists that can help them. To date, over 400 genealogists have solved 245 unclaimed person cases since 2008. One important thing to note about unclaimed persons is that they are not “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” cases where the identity of the deceased is unknown. In an unclaimed person case, the identity of the deceased is known but the identity of the next of kin eludes authorities.
The problem of unclaimed persons has attracted the attention of many genealogists, including noted genealogist and television personality Megan Smolenyak. Smolenyak had done work which reunited lost heirlooms with their families and she applied some of the same techniques to some unclaimed persons to see whether she could locate the next of kin. She was successful, and made a few episodes chronicling her efforts for a series on RootsTelevision.com. Out of Megan’s efforts came the web site mentioned above and also an active Facebook community of the genealogists who are working on solving the unclaimed persons cases.
As I was learning about unclaimed persons, I remembered a chilling and very sad story that I heard about earlier this summer. In May, the body of a young boy was found alongside a road in Maine. As I read the news reports, I could see that the boy had not yet been identified. No one had filed a missing persons report on him or anything like that and authorities were looking for clues as to his identity in addition to looking for information about what had happened to him. For days, a computer generated image of the boy appeared in news stories on television and on the internet in hopes of finding his family. Finally, almost a week later, he was identified when a citizen in Massachusetts spotted a vehicle that had been near the crime scene. Authorities located the vehicle, and the woman inside the vehicle acknowledged that she was the boy’s mother and that she had killed him.
The story of the little boy was sad enough on its own, but the fact that he was unclaimed for almost a week made it that much more heartbreaking, especially when it came to light that the person that one would expect to be searching for a missing child was in fact the person responsible for his death. It is my hope that through the efforts of the volunteer genealogists associated with unclaimedpersons.org, the next of kin of many more unclaimed deceased can be located so that they may be laid to rest by their loved ones.