Tracking down previous owners for QuitClaim Deed?

[Leilah Davis]

We're under contract on a property that we really like for our next project. This is an off-market deal. I had contacted the owner directly and asked if he wanted to sell and he said yes, so we worked out a deal. Unfortunately the abstract came back and there's a problem with the title from 1996. I feel like a lot of people just walk away at this point ... but all that's needed is to get the owners from 1996 to sign a quitclaim deed!! It feels doable ... has anyone had success doing something like this? If so, how did you go about tracking them down and how did you approach them about getting them to sign a quitclaim deed? Any suggestions would be great. We are totally comfortable spending a couple thousand dollars on this, as there aren't many properties in our area that fit our needs AND we've already pumped some time and money into the design assuming this deal would go through easily (naive of us, I know). 

If your advice is to just walk away, there's no need to comment please. We've already discussed it and we're willing to spend about a week trying to make this happen. After that, we'll walk away. I'm mostly looking for advice from anyone who has successfully done this before. 

Thanks!!