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You can find your women classmates by basing your search on what you already know about them: approximate ages, city where they lived when teenagers, their middle initials or names, and their maiden names. Using that knowledge, it is then a matter of finding documents providing even more information. In just a few steps you can usually locate your classmates or someone who knows them. This approach takes more time initially, but is more accurate than the traditional practice of mindlessly grabbing names out of databases. Identifying someone with the simply the same name as your classmate and not knowing anything about that person - e.g. a telephone listing - usually wastes your time. Many more people that we can imagine have the same names as your missing classmates. You can leave a message asking them if they are your classmates, but most of the time your call will go unanswered, especially if it's long distance. The searcher is then in the quandary of not knowing if further searches are necessary. Because women usually change their names when married, a search proceeding from the known to the unknown is especially advantageous.
The earliest marriage certificate for the woman is the key to obtaining accurate and concise personal information which will lead you to them. Marriage certificates vary from state to state and from year to year, but generally, they supply the following:
FURTHER CLASSMATE IDENTIFICATION
1. Married name. True, many couples break up, about one half, but divorced women usually continue to use their married names because of children and property ownership.
2. Husband's first name. Most married couples will purchase real and personal property jointly.
3. Date of birth. This fact can provide positive identification on other documents, such as voter registration, subsequent marriage certificates, death certificates, and various CD-ROM's.
IDENTITY OF INDIVIDUALS WHO KNOW CLASSMATES
1. Husband. Even if divorced, most couples have children, forming a long term common bond.
2. Father-in-law and mother-in-law. If the marriage produced offspring, grandparents usually know where their grandchildren are, and their mother.
3. Father and mother. Most of the time, the bride will list her mother's address on the certificate. The father may still be there or long gone, but the mother may have remarried, so check property records for that address by the mother's first name, as well as the brides first name.
4. Friends and siblings. The happy couple usually have friends, sisters, and brothers as part of the wedding party, from which two sign as witnesses. Although their signatures are sometimes difficult to read, almost all print their addresses. Often, the witnesses are classmates.
Filling in a blank marriage certificate is the best way to compile the facts, and one has been provided for you to print out and copy. While buying a certified copy is expensive, anyone can transcribe as many public documents as they are allowed to read at no cost. The Los Angeles County Recorder limits researchers, but not those doing their own genealogy, to five certificates a day. The Orange County Recorder imposes no such limit. Leads provided by the marriage certificates vary in importance as classmates proceed through life's passages. For example, classmate's mothers will probably be at the same addresses for the 10 year reunion, and not likely for the 50 year, but their children will be adults at that time. A study of what percentage of parents were still living at the same address reveals that as many as 45% are still there 20 years after their daughters leave high school.
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