Finding lost classmates

This is a brief introduction to methods to help locate lost classmates using the Internet.

The most useful site on the Internet for finding people is Switchboard. You can enter the info you have and this site will search the white pages from the phone book to locate matches. The problem is you have to have some idea of where they live. I typically do the following:

Start with the last name, city and state where I know they last lived.
If the last name is not too common (or the state is small) I will drop the city and just seach on last name and state.
Finally I will try the last name in Ithaca to see if there are any relatives (usually parents or siblings) that may still live there. I then call them and see if they can be of any help.

To see this work, try all 3 with my name.

First Hogue, Madison, CT ... finds me
Second Hogue, CT ... finds me and 19 other people
Third Hogue, Ithaca, NY ... finds my parents and my sister (class of 78)

The other place that is helpful are the search engines.

Simply enter the name of the person you are looking for and see if there are any references. This is a bit tougher as there may be a lot of people with the same name. Just try "Jim Hogue" in Google. But with patience you may have good results.

When you attempt to contact people, remember that often email is ignored or tossed as spam. Your best bet is to call or send a note in the regular mail.

You can also try some of the sites dedicated to alumni connections on the net. 2 that come to mind are:

They require you to sign up (it is free) to access the information.

While this is a short list, it is a good place to start.

Here is a list of the missing classmates

If you find any lost classmates, please forward the information to builder -at- ihs75 -dot- com so I can update the database.

Thanks,

Jim