Unclaimed Persons Celebrates Ninth Anniversary and Launches New Website

I received this information from the Unclaimed Persons Forum today:

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Unclaimed Persons Celebrates Ninth Anniversary and Launches New Website

Every life is worth remembering, and this month Unclaimed Persons (UP) celebrates its ninth anniversary helping to unite the remains of deceased individuals with their next of kin.

Alone in death and tucked away on dark shelves or cold gurneys in morgues across the country, thousands of deceased individuals whose names are known to coroners, medical examiners, and a handful of friends have no known family members to claim their remains. Homelessness, mental illness, long-term estrangement, deaths of all apparent next of kin, and other circumstances have severed familial connections. Ever-increasing caseloads and shrinking budgets make it nearly impossible for many medical examiners, coroners, and investigators to find these individuals’ relatives without help.

Launched in June 2008, UP’s online community of volunteer researchers over the past nine years has worked with medical examiners, coroners, and forensic investigators from 55 counties to solve 471 cases. Our members’ genealogical investigative skills, selflessness, and determination are the reason for UP’s success. Their dedication means 471 families no longer wonder what happened to a parent, child, sibling, aunt, uncle, or another relative – and many of these formerly unclaimed individuals have found their way home for proper burial.

Please join us in celebrating Unclaimed Persons’ anniversary and success by following us at www.facebook.com/unclaimedpersons. We also hope you will consider becoming a member to help fight the quiet unclaimed epidemic in morgues across the U.S. More information is available at our NEW website, www.unclaimed-persons.org .

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Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak started this project nine years ago and then a number of researchers volunteered and took it over.  I worked a bit on some cases - it was fun to be helpful and instructive to research formerly 21st century living persons.  The group works in a collaborative fashion.  If this interests you, please volunteer.  Note, however, that you cannot share information about the cases outside of the closed Facebook group.

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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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