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If you are a man and you are 49, born on 19th February 1961, could you be my half-brother? You were born at Honeypot Lane Nursing Home, Harrow, Middx, and adopted a few months afterwards. Our Mum has always told our sister and me about you, and we are registered on the Adoption Contact Register at the General Records Office and also with NORCAP, in the hope of finding you one day. I have also put your birth name on our family tree on here.

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Madeline


It really is pretty hopeless expecting that someone is just going to pass by and see this message and be the person you are looking for.


There are allegedly over 10 million members of GR

That number has accrued snce GR was first founded 9 or 10 years ago

No member is ever removed from the site ........... so all numbers are still active, but the people with those numbers probably are not.


I believe that there might well be less than 1 million active members .... and by that I mean members who pay attention to emails sent by GR


Of that 1 million, an unknown number are free members which means they can put up their tree, received Hot Matches, and read these boards .......... but they cannot respond on the threads. Nor can they initiate a pm

I believe that well over half the 1 million are free members


Of the members, probably only a few hundred have ever found their way to these community boards.




In short ................................... what you get on this TTF board is NOT your relation appearing, but people like myself ...... another member with a little more expertise in searching and subscriptions in other sites that we are willing to use to help find information.


I refuse to help people looking for living relations, largely because I live in another country and do not now know the UK system for finding adoptees etc.


Your best bet on GR is to put your half-brother's name in the Search Trees facility above, and see if anyone has his name in their tree.



Another option is to go over to GR's parent site, Friends Reunited (tab above), register (it's free), and then search that site for his name.


FR has message boards, hundreds of them, with thousands of threads, and again I think that the chance of your brother just passing by and seeing a thread is pretty slim over there as well. But try the name search.



sylvia

As a long shot....have you tried putting his birth name into Search at top left hand of page ?

Pam: Yes, I've tried his birth name everywhere on here, thanks.


Sylvia: The tone of your message is suggesting that I, and indeed anyone else in a similar positoin to myself, and there are many on here, may as well not bother........
as explained in my post, I have registered my details in the most obvious places here in the UK, and where my brother would eventually be directed to if he or a son or daughter of his decided to search for us.

Of course it's a long-shot, but if nobody ever bothered to even try a long-shot, no-one would ever find anyone they are looking for, and, judging by some of the success stories on here, it actually DOES work sometimes.

We have proof of that in our family already - my sister-in-law put a post on here about a year-and-a-half ago (it was after her own successful search on here that she suggested I try this site to search for my brother), looking for family members on my husband's side, without knowing for sure if there were any, and within a very short time, (1 day to be precise), a family member did indeed "just pass by" and saw her message. Now they are in touch regularly and have even met up with cousins, aunts and uncles they weren't sure they had, and have discovered they have an older half-sister too.

I am fully aware of Friends Reunited and how it works, but without my brother's adopted name it won't be any good - he is highly unlikely to be registered at an old school or workplace under his birth name, which is all we have, and I haven't the faintest idea which area he would have lived in - if I knew all that it would be a lot easier but birth relatives in the UK are understandably not given that information.

I for one, and, I am sure, plenty of others on here looking for people, shall continue with my long-shot, whatever others may think of our chances, and however slim those chances of finding each other might be. It is, after all, as it's very name suggests, what this board is for - people Trying To Find people.

And if nothing comes of it......at least we know we are trying everything we can, and that alone gives us hope.

Madeline

Well said I totally agree with you.

Never give up hope of finding your brother - I am sure you will eventually win the day.

Good luck!

Thank you Travelman,
There are some people who use this site who seem to think they are in charge of how other people use it.
To suggest to someone that they are wasting their time is offensive - I wonder what response they are expecting from us - do they think we are going to say something like "oh, ok, I'm sure you're right, I'll just delete all my threads and not bother searching for whoever, just because it means nothing to you and you told me to" ? I don't know who they think they are.
There are many kind people on here who spend a lot of time and effort looking things up for others, and to those people I say thank you so much for the help you give. It's just that there are some who overstep the mark with what they obviously think is their "helpful" advice without realising that they are being really quite rude and patronising.
Sorry to go off on one, don't usually rant on like that, but just had to get it off my chest, having seen similar posts on others' threads, and now having had one put on mine (she also put the same post on my other thread where I'm trying to track down an old school friend for my husband - the cheek of it!)
Thanks for your support anyway.

n

Hi Madeline, I have been helping on this site for a couple of years now; I don't have the expertise of Sylvia (believe me, she is good) but I do understand what she is saying. It is a pretty long shot to expect the person you are looking for to be browsing the Genes Reunited boards at the exact time your message is on show.

There are many success stories on the success page, but most of those are because the helpers on here have been able to get to grips with some definite leads.

I am wondering what else you could do to further your search. Have you seen some of the threads which appear on here from time to time, offering advice about adoption? They may be able to point you in a direction you haven't yet tried.

We had one similar thread on here last year for several months. However, it did give the name of the person being looked for and several helpful members offered advice which, in turn, nudged it back to the top of the boards. There was a successful end to this story - the person being looked for knew they were adopted and had googled their own name and up popped the GR posting.

It may, of course, be that your brother doesn't know that he was adopted and so may not be looking at sites such as this.

Just a few thoughts. Cynthia

Mad as it sounds, have you tried googling his original name? Or the surname if unusual? I did this with someone and blow me it directed to a local history forum!
Don't forget facebook - a long shot but if he wants to be found he might just use his original name.
There is this site called searchline, but you might well be using it already:

http://www.search-line.co.uk/gbook8.php?book=2
Jan

Gee, Madeline.

I think Sylvia might have been referring to your "nudging".

Once your post is here, if someone searches for the name in question, by doing a board search, they will find your post. If they do a tree search, they will find the name in your tree, if it's there.

In the meantime, she is 100% correct -- the chance of someone related seeing the post within the minutes after you "nudge" it is as close to nil as it comes.

And meanwhile, every time you nudge the post you bump another person's search (some of which are equally important to the people in question) off the front page and farther down the list of threads.

The thread Cynthia referred to -- which was incessantly "nudged" by supposedly helpful people multiple times daily, to the total annoyance of very many other users of the board -- was found by the person being sought when she googled her name -- and would have been found if no one had ever "nudged" the thing once at this site.

Not that I would presume to *suggest* anything to you. Heaven forefend, that anyone suggest anything to someone out of a desire to be helpful.

Thank you brummiejan, I have looked at Searchline and contacted them to find out more.

Is this thread not an exact duplicate of this one:

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.asp?wci=thread&tk=1186385

?

Just think, if we all posted several threads exactly the same, we could populate the entire first couple of pages of the TTF board with our own threads. As long as we kept nudging them!

lol lol lol

"Before posting, please read the guidelines for message board use."

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/?wci=grstatic&type=guidelines

"2. The Rules
Don't submit the same – or similar – material more than once."

Hi madeline,
I am fairly new to family history, and are still trying to find my way around.
have you tried putting a message on Ancestry, or any of the other message boards out there.
What about tribal pages also.

just a thought

George

http://www.google.ca/#q=%22IS+YOUR+BIRTHDAY+19TH+FEBRUARY%3F%22&num=30&hl=en&safe=off&filter=0&fp=8db674f535ac5412

Results 1 - 7 of 7 for "IS YOUR BIRTHDAY 19TH FEBRUARY?"

Genes Reunited – Family History Records and Family Trees
IS YOUR BIRTHDAY 19th FEBRUARY? DO YOU KNOW SOMEO ·
Madeline, 22/01/2010 19:58:37, 12. If you are a man aged 48 and your birthday is . ...
www.genesreunited.co.nz/boards.asp?wci=board&bk=2&px...


Now just imagine if the heading of the post had a *name* in it, and the person in question googled his name some day ...

*That* is how another lost adopted sibling found her brother here at GR. Her birth name was in the heading of his post, and she googled her birth name. (Google appears to cache thread listings on discussion boards here, but not individual threads.)

Much more likely than him googling "IS YOUR BIRTHDAY 19TH FEBRUARY?" it seems to me ... but hey, I wouldn't presume to advise.

Thank you for your interest and your suggestion George, I'll give it a go.
Good luck to you with yours!

Hi Madeline

I'm one of the people on here who does do *living people* searches.

I'm in absolute agreement with Janey when she suggests that you put your brother's name in the title of your thread. If he ever *googles* his birth name he would then find this thread.........but he would never just *google* his date of birth would he??

Mary

Thank you JaneyCanuck and Contrary Mary, I'll do it when I've got time - got to take son to swimming lesson now!

I think that what bothers me a little, is that this gentleman

a) may not know he is adopted .....and

b) may not want to be 'found'.


Such a delicate situation. Cx.