Roots Television | Megan's Roots World

When RootsTelevision.com launched Unclaimed Persons a week ago, the hope was to bring attention to a virtually unknown epidemic, but also offer a potential solution. The epidemic? Literally unclaimed persons. Many of us are familiar with John and Jane Does, but very few are aware of the struggles of coroners' offices across the country to find the next of kin for the ever-growing number of people who are identified, but have no one to claim them. The solution? An unlikely teaming of coroners and genealogists working together to find the families of the unclaimed.

Tripping across a newspaper article about this little known problem, genealogist Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak realized that she and fellow family history sleuths were perfectly equipped to help. Offering her assistance to coroners' offices in Scranton, Pennsylvania and San Bernardino, California, she quickly located next of kin for cases that had remained unresolved for months or even years. Two such cases are highlighted in Unclaimed Persons. A supplemental video, Unclaimed Persons Research: Joseph Higgs, allows the viewer to watch over Megan's shoulder as she surfs her way to a solution in one of the cases.

From the day the show launched, sympathetic and skilled genealogists started to tackle the unsolved case of John Finch that ended the Unclaimed Persons episode. One of them was well-known professional genealogist and author, Kimberly Powell. Eagle-eyed Kimberly spotted a particularly important clue – a brief snippet in the St. Joseph News-Press about a likely niece of the deceased. Apparently, her car had been broken into just a week earlier. Piggy-backing off of information provided, several possible addresses for the niece were found and passed on to the Lackawanna Coroner's Office, which then wrote to each of them. Yesterday, the coroner's office received a call from John Finch's brother. Thanks to Kimberly's genealogical detective skills, a case that had been open since 1999 was solved in just six days. John Finch is no longer an unclaimed person.

"We realized that almost everything about this was experimental," said Marcy Brown, co-founder of RootsTelevision.com. "Not only the pairing of coroners and genealogists, but also the use of online video to bring attention to a serious, but hidden problem of national scope. We hope that this is just the beginning and are trying to figure out the best way to facilitate the resolution of additional cases. As a first step, we invite people to join the Unclaimed Persons group we've just launched on Facebook" (those who are new to Facebook will need to register).