Finding DNA Matches On Social Media
- Leslie Ryan
- Jun 12
- 3 min read
I've been looking for a client's biological family for the last few weeks. Checking all the usual sites, Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and FindMyPast.
Have you ever considered using your Social Media account for those DNA matches?
I had their tree pretty filled out on the maternal side, but there were still a lot of loose threads on the paternal side. I turned to my old friend Google Search to get more clues. We've talked about this before, so I'll be brief.
Go to your favorite search engine, and in the search field, type in the name your are researching in "quotation marks" then add a + sign for each additional thing you know about that person:
"Latonia N. Heathermore" + Seattle + obit and hit enter.
If you are lucky you will get an obituary that mentions Latonia, and several of her family members. I found the obit of my client's mother at Legacy.com (another great place to start looking for people who have passed in this decade, by the way). The obit included all of her children's names (except my given up for adoption client's, of course), their spouses' names, and their locations. You can download or print out these lengthy obits and fill up more of your family tree. Be sure to attach this to your tree!
Other websites for people searching will pop up, and if you click on them, you can find "possible relatives," associates, addresses, sometimes email addresses, and whether or not they have a page on a certain giant in the social media world.
Go to your social media platform, and activate the Search, typing in the name of one of the people supposedly related to your mystery, supply the city they have lived in, and see who pops up. Again, if you are lucky, your possible relative will be very open about their familial relationships! I have found several siblings, cousins, aunts, grandparents with accounts, and pictures; and been able to place several cousin DNA matches in my client's tree.
As you may recall, this was a very endogamous family with thousands and thousands of cousin matches, but these social media accounts have made it possible to narrow down the closest matches, as well as those that may be most open to sharing family information. The half sibling with a lot of posts and family pictures is a much more friendly and curious person than the one with no pictures and no posts. Agree?
We have picked the Most Recent Common Ancestor to contact first, and emails have been sent through Ancestry and through their email address found on public info on the internet, and we await a response with fingers crossed.
If you have a Social Media account, put it to use finding DNA matches! Look in sites you are active on such as Facebook, Etsy or LinkedIn. Where else could you look? Please share!
Bye the way, it seems that "Latonia N. Heathermore" might be a great stripper name or alias? Several people came up as an "also known as" match. This was the pedigree name of a fancy purebred cat I inherited 40 years ago, and I was very surprised to have any matches pop up!
I hope that you are having good luck finding your ancestors with your DNA matches or genealogy! If you're stuck, send me an email. I'll give it a FREE NO OBLIGATION look over to see if I can help you. Sometimes all you need is another set of eyes to look over what you have to get a breakthrough!
Thanks for visiting and subscribing!
Regards,
Leslie Ryan
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