Using my Genealogy Skills to return a class ring to it's owner

 

My neighbor told me that in a box that she picked up at either a garage sale, estate sale or auction has a class ring from a nearby town. She said the woman's name was engraved on the inside and she wasn't able to locate her.

So I volunteered to try to find the who this ring belongs too. I first took some pictures of the front of the ring and the inside of the ring because my eyes aren’t what they use to be.

I saw that she graduated in 1983 and her name was on the inside engraved.

The first thing I did was look up in Newspapers.com and the woman’s name and put the year of 1983 and the county that the high school was located in. it returned on match and the woman’s name shows that she did graduate in 1983 at that high school.

Next, I went to Ancestry.com and did a general search for the woman using her first and last name and I estimated her birth date base on her graduation year and put in location as just my county and state. This brought back a couple of matches, one for a marriage that occurred in Dec 1983 and another for a divorce in 1988. It also had a newspaper index that was for the divorce and listed a town she was living in at the time.

I decided to google her married name with born 1965 and listed the town and state that she was living in at the time of her divorce. My “people search” websites came up and one I could see had her maiden, married and another married name.

I returned to Ancestry.com and using the card catalog, I decided to find the Wisconsin Marriage records, and clicked on the one for 1802-2015. I put her new married name in the first last name field, and then under the spouse I put her first name. The result was her marriage to her second husband showing her maiden name that match her previous marriage record.

I brought up the hint, and click on her spouse’s name and saw the US Index to Public Records, 1994-2019 database. I clicked on this hint and it gave me their last address as living there from 2018-2020.

I went back to the previous “people search” result and it also reported the same address.

I used Google once more and put in the address from above. Zillow reported that this house was last sold in 2018. Therefore, I could write her a letter and tell her I have her class ring. However, I decided to see if I could find her on Facebook. I typed her first name, her current married name and the town she lives in. This brought back only one result and what I could see in her “about me”, this was the correct person.

I reached out through Facebook messaging tell her I am looking for “gave the name on the ring” who graduated in 1983 from “gave the name of the school” and informed her that my neighbor has possession of her class ring. I asked if this was her and if she wanted her ring back, please reply. I also included the three pictures of the ring that I took, two were of her engraved name.

Within an hour, she replied that was her ring. We messaged back and forth a little more and are planning to meet next weekend to return the ring.

It is very rewarding to know that my genealogy skills was able to reunite a class ring back to it’s owner. Also, that my skills actually found the person I wanted to find.

Remember to have fun and just do Genealogy!