Searcher Joan Allen's weekly column on tracing missing relatives which appears in the Bristol Evening Post

My website is up and running and hopefully will be looking OK. I am a thicko when it comes to building a website as the previous one was given to me up and running in October last year.

Setting it up has been a nightmare but I am not too old at 51 to go on a learning curve. I quite enjoy a challenge.

This week I will give some hints as how to carry out a search.

If you are looking for anyone and you know their last address then you can check the electoral roll archives (in the area they lived) to find out who else was living at that address in a particular year.

For Bristol it is the Library on College Green that holds the information.

This helps when you only know the maiden name of a person, as it can possibly give details of parents' or siblings' names.

Getting the name of a male can help enormously as their names don't change.

Armed with this information, try to get access to www.192.com . It lists nearly everyone registered on the electoral roll in the UK and the website also has a cheap version of the program on CD Rom called UK Info Disk which can be purchased at shops such as PC World.

Electoral rolls show the names in full rather than ploughing through telephone books with just the initial.

Bear in mind that people in the Forces or in institutions will not be listed on the electoral roll. If you cannot get access to the internet or the disk, then phone me. I have both.

To check for a marriage, your local library can help. It holds the birth, death and marriage indexes for the England and Wales.

It is time consuming to search but the end result of finding the person you are looking for is great.

This will not point you to an address but if you have the name, the information will help.

Generally, most people stay in a 10-mile radius of where they were born or move hundreds of miles away. When I carry out a search, I concentrate on the area where they were last known to be.

Sometimes neighbours can be a great help, especially if it is a small village or close community.

If you are searching for an adoptee, this is the most difficult search to carry out as there is no cross-referencing of name at birth and new name available to the general public.

Any blood relative can search for an adoptee by placing their information on the contact register. Likewise the register is available to anyone searching for their birth parents.

You may find the person you are seeking is already registered and if so, you will be informed of this. The address is: Office for National Statistics, The General Register Office, Adoptions Section, Smedley Hydro, Trafalgar Road, Birkdale Southport, PR8 2HH. Tel: 0151 471 4200.

If you were adopted and don't know your birth name then you can apply here to get your full birth certificate and any other information surrounding your adoption may also be held here.

If you are searching for an adoptee then if you have enough information then it MAY BE possible to find them. I can offer a few tips how to go about it if you telephone me.

I will sign off saying "never give up hope in your search".

I have had people contact me that have been searching over 25 years, searching for a marriage, phoning people with the same name, going back to the old address and checking with neighbours and they have come to me and I have located the person within a week.

Only the other week a young woman who had all the information about her birth mother and had been searching for ten years made contact with me. I went down a different avenue and dropped a letter into the ex-husband's letterbox and within two days, the birth mother was on the telephone to me.

Mother and daughter are in contact with each other now.

Used courtesy of the Bristol Evening Post

Joan Allan's Search Site