I Searched for Her and I Found Me

Talkative Friend called the other day and as conversations go, ours meandered from one topic to another. She mentioned that she'd lost track of a friend and wondered how she could find her. By her own admission, Talkative Friend is not computer savvy. I told her there are search engines online that sometimes give the phone numbers and addresses of people. I was going to look up her friend for her, but the names of the people finder search engines didn't come to mind before the conversation meandered again.

After we finished our conversation, I realized that I didn't have Talkative Friend's phone number because she'd moved and, at about the same time, remembered that pipl was one of the search engines I'd used. I went to pipl and typed in her name. I quickly scrolled down the results and then promptly forgot about finding her phone number when I realized that pipl finds not only living people but also dead people. It finds ancestors! Or, better said, it finds links to ancestors.

I immediately typed in the name of one of my ancestors. She was there in several records at ancestry and familysearch, in a list of archives, on webpages, and in blog posts. I was very excited -- until I realized that I'd found my own blog posts about my ancestor. Of course I was disappointed that no one else was blogging about her. However, when I searched for several other ancestors I found links to websites where their names were.

Maybe, if others mention your ancestors in their blogs or have them on webpages or in databases, pipl can help you connect with others. It's possible you may find another source for your ancestor that's new to you.

On the other hand, maybe you will search for him/her and find you.