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Adopted woman goes on genealogy journey to find her family tree

The High Point Museum gives advice on how to look up your family tree.

HIGH POINT, N.C. — Sara Blanchett knew she was adopted. She also knew that the road to researching her true family tree would be difficult.

"The laws vary from state to state and my research led me to New Jersey, so you should probably do that research first, to see what info will be easy or hard to find," said Blanchett, "I was lucky in that my real parents' names were not blacked out but that's not the case in every state."

That being said, the next step can be as easy as ancestry.com but in Blanchett's case she knew her mom's name but it was a very common name and that made it more difficult than usual.

"Since her name was so common I couldn't just search social media or the heritage websites. I had to start looking at property address records to see if my mom was the one that lived at the address on my birth certificate at the time I was born," continued Blanchett.

She hasn't nailed it down just yet but her search goes on.

Marcellas Joiner is the supervisor for the Heritage Research Center with the High Point Museum. He too went down the genealogy research trail but found an unusual tool that a lot of us might not have thought of when researching.

"So I did the typical Ancestry.com route but as I went along I found that social media has a wealth of knowledge as well," said Joiner, "I stumbled on people who had family pages as well as genealogical sites dedicated to certain surnames and they were extremely valuable in painting the picture of my family."

Regardless of your method, both Blanchett and Joiner believe that it's a journey worth taking.

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