Discover the essential search strategies that every genealogist should be using when searching for records at FamilySearch.org, the popular free genealogy website. In Elevenses with Lisa episode 64 Lisa Louise Cooke discusses:
Wild cards you can use when searching FamilySearch
Search strategies to help you get more results
Advanced Search strategies
Episode 64 Show Notes
FamilySearch.org is a free genealogy records and family tree website. You will need to be logged into your free account in order to search for genealogy records.
In this video and show notes I will outline strategies for searching for people by name in genealogy records. You can then apply these techniques to your genealogy research plan. Knowing what you’re specifically looking for will give you a better chance at success.
Elevenses with Lisa episode 64 – Share on Pinterest
Starting Your Search at FamilySearch
In the menu go to Search > Records (then use the form).
Start with a broad search.
Search results ignore the order of first names but will preserve name order if there are two last names.
Click the Exact Match box to start narrowing in on specific names and spellings.
Even if you are confident that you know exact names and places try variations. For example, add or remove a name and turn on and turn off Exact Match.
Strategies for Searching Names FamilySearch:
Add or remove middle names.
Try searching for nicknames.
Try spelling variations. Use the AlternateName You can search up to four alternate names at a time. Try clicking the Exact Match box for each alternate name.
example of Alternate Name search at FamilySearch
Try spelling the name as it would have been spelled in the old country. (Example: Sporan / Sporowski / Sporovsky / Sporowski)
Use wildcards to help with search variations.
Asterisk (*) replaces zero or more characters.
Question mark (?) replaces a single character.
Use cluster research techniques by searching on relationships.
A few words about searching on relationships: Try searching only with your ancestor’s first name and a known relationship such as a spouse, parent or other relative. In addition to specific people, try searching for a surname associated with the family.
Over time the spelling of a last name can change in a family. It’s important, even if you receive initial successful results, to try all variations, including language variations.
In the case of women, records will be under the last name they were using at the time the record was created. Therefore, try searching for them using their maiden name and then their married name (or names if they were married multiple times.)
Try leaving the last name field blank. This can be particularly effective when searching for female ancestors. This strategy works well in conjunction with entering additional information, such as the names of the spouse or parents.
Try just surnames, unique first names, and Other Person
Pro Tip: Use Snagit to easily create a search log
Learn more about Snagit: How to Use Snagit for Genealogy (episode 61) Save 15% on Snagit with our exclusive discount coupon code: GENEALOGY15
Have you been using Snagit? Leave a comment
Here’s an example of a search log I created using Snagit. You can add custom text, symbols, highlighting and much more to create exactly the log that works for you.
Search log created with Snagit
Here’s how to quickly capture and keep a research log of your FamilySearch searches:
Run your search as usual.
Use Snagit to clip the number of results and the terms searched at the top of the results page. (Set Snagit to “Region” to precisely clip that portion of the screen.)
Continue searching and clipping. When done, go back to the Snagit Editor.
Click Control (Win) or Command (Mac) and click to select each clipping you made in order. You can also select all of your clippings by clicking to select the first clipping and then hold down the shift key on your keyboard and click the last clipping.
Right-click on the selected clipping to access the menu. Click Combine in Template.
In the pop-up Combinein Template box, select a template. I like to use Custom Steps for a research log.
Click the Next
Give your combined image a Title. (You can edit this again later.)
Select the font and canvas color as desired.
The NumberImages box will probably be selected. This will place a “step” number in front of each clipping showing the order in which you clipped. You can deselect this box if you don’t want to number your clippings.
Click the Combine
Edit the combined image as desired. You can click to select items to move and resize them. You may need to ensure you’re not in Text mode – click the Arrow at the top of the screen and then you’ll be able to click on items like the numbered steps and move them around. Grab the edges and drag them to crop if needed.
Save your image: File > Save As.
Search Strategy: Events
Try searching on known life events such as:
Birth
Marriage
Residence
Death
Any
Click the type of life event you want to include in your search. Enter the place and year range.
Life Events Search Tips:
Try your search with different events.
Try your search with no events.
Use the Residence option to find records identifying where a person was living. Some records contain an address or last place of residence. Birthplaces, marriage places, and death places are not the same as residence places.
Use the Any Event if you know a date and place for an event other than birth, marriage, death, or residence. For example, a search with an Any event can find dates of military enlistment or immigration.
Search Strategies: Places
In the place field try searching at a more or less specific place level. If you searched for a town, try the county, state, district or country.
Try using wildcards in place-names. (Enter * to replace zero or more characters. Enter ? to replace one character.)
Search Strategies: Years
In the year fields try adding a year before and a year after.
In the year fields, try searching with no years first, and then filter the results to narrow your search by year.
Advanced Search Strategies
Include multiple events in your search when you are looking for a record that likely contains all the events.
Death records – try searching with both birth and death events.
Birth record, include only a birth event, since birth records usually do not contain death information.
To search for a child’s birth records, enter the child’s name, then click Parents. Enter the parents’ names. If needed, try variations such as these:
Both of the parents’ full names.
The father’s full name only.
The mother’s full married name only; then her full married name only.
The father’s full name with the mother’s first name.
The mother’s full maiden name with the father’s first name.
To find all of the children in a family, leave the first and last name fields blank.
Then click Parents and conduct your search using only parents’ names. Try all the variations.
Searching for Marriage Records
To search for a marriage enter the name of one person in the first and last name fields. Click Spouses, and enter the name of the spouse. Try variations: the spouse’s first name and the wife’s maiden name. To limit your search results to marriage records only, click Type, and click the Marriage checkbox.
Search Best Practices
Have a specific search goal.
Start with a broad search. You do not have to enter information in all search fields. You often can get better results when you leave most blank, and then filter down.
FamilySearch doesn’t support Boolean Operators like Google does.
Expect records and indexes to contain errors, spelling variations, and estimations.
Try your search several times with variations.
Even if your ancestors had easy-to-spell names, expect spelling discrepancies. Anderson could be Andersen in some records. Try Anders?n in the Last Names search box.
Always look at the image, if possible. It often has more information than the index alone.
Recently Lisa heard from Mary Ann, a Genealogy Gems Premium member who met her at the NGS Conference in St. Charles this past spring. She appreciated the Outside the Box sessions we co-presented along with some of our partner exhibitors, particularly one by Janet Hovorka on family reunion ideas.
“I want to find ways to get younger people in my family interested in the family history,” writes Mary Ann, who says Janet’s session had a “wealth of ideas.” “Ideas started running around in my head related to scavenger hunts, photo guessing games and other things to do when my family gets together every year at Thanksgiving.”
For Mary Ann and the rest of you who want to include heritage among your reunion activities, here’s another idea I just tried. Last weekend, I helped host a RootsTech Family Discovery Day near me (click here to learn more about these free regional events). As part of our activities for children, we created a family tree hopscotch activity in the middle of a gymnasium.
Here’s how we did it:
We printed and laminated sheets of paper that said, “Me,” “Mom,” “Dad,” “Grandma (mom’s mom),” Grandpa (mom’s dad),” and so forth, up to great-great grandparents.
We laid these on the ground and taped all the way around them with electrical tape (which removes easily from the floor). It worked best to lay out the great-great-grandparents first (since it was so crowded up there) and then move DOWN the generations, so we’d get the spacing right.
We used more electrical tape to draw relationship lines between parents and then the linking line to each child.
We taped additional questions to the floor around the tree, like: “How many great-great-grandparents do you have?” and “If you have three children, and so do each of your children, and so do each of THEIR children, how many great-grandchildren would you have?”
We supplied beanbags for children to toss to one of the ancestor’s spots, where they could then hop. The challenge was to name that ancestor, which we invited them to do with their parents.
This was a popular activity! I’ve been told that very young children actually learn best when they’re active and moving around. The “under 5” set at the reunion did enjoy tossing the beanbag and hopping around. Several school-age kids commented on how BIG the tree starts to get as you go back in time, and took pride when they could name a relative.
If I had to do it again, I’d make the lower generation squares larger so they’d be easier to hop from. If I adapted this for my own family reunion, I could do it outdoors in sidewalk chalk in a parking lot or driveway. With my own family, I would probably name each person and even try to put a picture or fact or two on each piece of paper about them. This could also be done as a reverse tree that names all the descendants of the common ancestors shared by everyone at the reunion.
If you’ve been wondering how to write and self-publish a book about your family history, my guest in this week’s free webinar has answers for you!
Amazon Link to Buy the Book
Click here to buy the book. (Thank you for using this link which helps make this free show possible.) J.M. Phillips is the author of the new book Lamlash Street,A Portrait of 1960’s Post-War London Through One Family’s Story available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle.
Elevenses with Lisa Episode 50
Join me on Thursday, April 1, 2021 at 11:00 am CENTRAL TIME for the live premiere of my interview with J.M. Phillips. I’ll be joining you live in the chat as watch together at the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel.
In this episode author J.M. Phillips shares:
How to be a great family history storyteller
Her favorite writing techniques that help create a compelling story
What she learned about self-publishing (and what you need to know)
Her experience living on and writing about Lamlash Street
My Guest: Author J.M Phillips
Jill Phillips is a family storyteller with a passion to inspire families to connect through the telling of their past. She started life on Lamlash Street in London, emigrated to Canada, where she obtained her master’s degree, and spent 30 years working as an Occupational Therapist and Hospital Manager. Motivated by her family’s experiences in 1960’s London, Jill shares their stories to celebrate a time of close family connections in difficult life situations and a way of life which is fondly remembered.
About the Book Lamlash Steet:
Explore a world that can’t be visited anymore—South East London, 1963.
On Lamlash Street, Cockney families have more life and character than money, living among the bombed out and condemned buildings. Post WWII London will evolve swiftly into the era of The Beatles, Twiggy, and modern, swinging London.
Experience the lively true story of a girl on her way to being a young woman, coming-of-age at a moment in London’s history unlike any other. Jill Phillips tries to capture her first kiss while navigating a world turning upside down and the trauma that her parents and uncle experienced during the war.
It’s a time when a local factory shutting down could mean more than just job loss. As families are torn apart, they rely on questionable yet quirky neighbors and find inventive ways to survive—like pay cigarette machines in the house and Christmas presents “special ordered” for a fraction of the cost.
Seen-but-not-heard by the adults in her life, Jill looks for young love and how to define herself. Stories of Nazi aircraft on the walk home from school, watching Doodle bugs (flying bombs) drop on London from rooftop perches, and her uncle’s many unsettling stories of war as young merchant mariner give her a unique lens of the world and what a better future could look like for her family.
Lamlash Street: A Portrait of 1960’s Post-War London Through One Family’s Story is a heartfelt and funny historical memoir.
How to be a family history storyteller.
In her new book Lamlash Street, Jill talked about how her uncle often shared his stories of fighting in World War II. I asked her what she thinks the value is of passing family stories like these from one generation to the next. Jill described how sharing family stories can often form connections between family members that previously couldn’t exist. By re-telling the past, we can learn how families can move stronger into the future. We can learn more about family decision making. Jill gained a sense of peace about turbulent times in her childhood from learning more about why her mum and dead did what they did, such as moving from Lamlash St. to Kent.
Jill’s uncle was a talented storyteller and I asked her if she had been one before writing the book. While she was emphatic that as an academic in her career she did not consider herself a storyteller, ultimately the experience of writing the book was “one of the most rewarding things I’ve done.”
Jill now takes comfort from her mum’s stories, and feels that they connect her more with her family. Writing and publishing your family’s history can help you learn even more about it because it so often generates even more connection and conversation within the family. That was certainly Jill’s experience, although she found her family very skeptical about the book project at first!
Lisa: Were there any tangible things you did to hone your skills as a storyteller and writer?
Jill: “I told myself ‘yes, you can do this!’”
How to Get Started Writing Your Family History Book
Just do it
The more you write the better you get at it.
The more you tell the stories, you better you get at the storytelling
Don’t think on day one that you should be able to write a great massive novel. Take it a piece at a time.
5 Strategies for Writing a Compelling Family History Book
Jill started by just writing down a list of the stories she could remember. Then she could add to it and go ask more questions of family members. Her advice: ‘Focus on just getting the stories down.”
To turn your family history book into a page-turner, create a “washing line”. Jill started by printing all her stories and then spreading them out. She says that individual stories are the article of clothing you pin on the story line. The washing line is the way you string them together.
Look for a common theme. Jill also used a single year as a theme and then string the stories to the events of the year. She would look at the remaining stories to see how she could combine them with what she had.
You should always have some romance in your stories. Jill decided to include a childhood crush.
Bookend the story by starting and ending with something consistent or thematic. Jill chose Christmas. The circumstances between Christmas 1962 and Christmas 1963 were dramatic, and provided contrast to the consistency of the familiar holiday.
Lisa’s tool suggestions:
Scrivener
Powerpoint slides
Paper, sticky notes, index cards
Jill’s Encouragements for Writing Your Story:
Don’t be overwhelmed by it.
Just stick with your family’s stories.
Don’t worry about stringing everything together until you have collected all your stories.
“Just take it a piece at a time.” You have to find what works for you.
How to Ask Relatives for Stories
I asked Jill if she ever anybody who resisted sharing their stories when she asked. Did she have any special techniques to warm things up?
Jill’s tips for gathering stories from reluctant relatives:
You have to be sensitive that there will always be stories people don’t want shared.
Keep things on the light side.
Remember you don’t have to include everything. Jill didn’t.
“I didn’t push it. Because we don’t know the details. We don’t know what happened at that time, why it’s such a sensitive area. And I really wanted something that the family would be warm and positive towards.”
Consider ways to make it less controversial. Jill felt that the fact that her book was about a 10 year old made it less controversial. “The whole point of this was to celebrate the family, not to cause division.” Some authors opt to do so. It’s your decision.
Publishing Your Book
Jill decided to self-publish her book because it gave her more control over the process and the outcome. It’s also an affordable option. However, she didn’t shy away from asking for help. She was very happy with the experience.
She used a full-service self-publishing company called Book Launchers. They hand-help her through the process of self-publishing and promotion. You can also go with more do-it-yourself print-on-demand services like Lulu, Book Baby, or Create Space. Need more references? Try talking to a local printer in your town.
Avoiding Self-Publishing Pitfalls
If you get easily overwhelmed with decisions and details a hand-holding self-publishing company is a good way to go.
Speak to someone who has been through the process before.
Understand that it’s much more complex than you can imagine.
Find an online self-publishing support group.
Relax and realize that the process of self-publishing takes a lot longer than you think it will.
Secrets for Turning Family History into an Entertaining and Compelling Book
Drop little breadcrumbs along the storyline to keep people anticipating and engaged.
Keep the sections within the stories short.
Include a variety of perspectives, locations etc. when you can.
Help the reader visualize the scenes with great descriptions and details.
Don’t get too involved in very long scenes.
Resist going over and over something. It doesn’t drive the idea home – it makes it boring!
Lisa mentioned the use of linguistics in tracing heritage. You can hear Lisa’s conversation with forensic linguist Dr. Robert Leonard in Episode 89 and Episode 90 of The Genealogy Gems Podcast.
About the Book: Lamlash Street by J.M. Phillips
(A portrait of 1960s post war London through one family’s story) Explore a world that can’t be visited anymore—South East London, 1963. On Lamlash Street, Cockney families have more life and character than money, living among the bombed out and condemned buildings. Post WWII London will evolve swiftly into the era of The Beatles, Twiggy, and modern, swinging London.
Please use this link if you decide to pick up a copy of the book.
Experience the lively true story of a girl on her way to being a young woman, coming-of-age at a moment in London’s history unlike any other. Jill Phillips tries to capture her first kiss while navigating a world turning upside down and the trauma that her parents and uncle experienced during the war.
It’s a time when a local factory shutting down could mean more than just job loss. As families are torn apart, they rely on questionable yet quirky neighbors and find inventive ways to survive—like pay cigarette machines in the house and Christmas presents “special ordered” for a fraction of the cost.
Seen-but-not-heard by the adults in her life, Jill looks for young love and how to define herself. Stories of Nazi aircraft on the walk home from school, watching Doodle bugs (flying bombs) drop on London from rooftop perches, and her uncle’s many unsettling stories of war as young merchant mariner give her a unique lens of the world and what a better future could look like for her family.
Learn a Little Cockney with Author Jill Phillips
Apples and Pears rhymes with Stairs Bonnet Fair rhymes with Hair
So her mum would say: “Jill, can you go up the apples and comb your bonnet?”
Trouble and Strife is your (rhyming) Wife Plates of Meat is your (rhyming) Feet If your dogs are barking it means your feet are aching!
If you’re lucky enough to have old home movies or photos, you probably want to preserve and share them. Consider these tips from digital film conversion expert Kristin Harding from Larsen Digital–and check out her coupon code for Genealogy Gems fans.
Recently, digital conversion expert Kristin Harding of Larsen Digital joined us on the Genealogy Gems podcast to answer questions and share top tips for digitizing old home movies and photographs. Here’s some of her advice:
On digitizing old photographs
Prioritize items that are the oldest, most special or rare, fragile or deteriorating (capture that image before it crumbles or fades).
Resolve to scan at a higher resolution: Scan old family pictures at 600dpi for 4 x 6 photos. Very small photos (and images you want to enlarge from a small portion, like a group photo) should be 1200 dpi. That way, when you enlarge them, you’ll get the sharpest, most clear image possible.
Consider the benefits of a professional scanning service: Professional scanners are faster, especially for more complicated projects like negatives and slides. You get better color quality and contrast and often post-scan editing like cropping and digital color correction.
On digitizing old home movies
All those old home movie formats like Super 8 and VHS are rapidly degrading and most of us can’t even play them anymore. Preserve old home movies as MP4 digital video files on your hard drive and back them up regularly with your entire hard drive. Digital video files also offer the convenience to edit your footage and upload files online to easily share with friends & family.
Save backup copies of these digital files on DVDs and CDs. The ability to read DVDs from our devices is already fading, but these “hard copies” can be kept in a safety deposit box for safe-keeping. They can be easily shared with relatives and popped into a DVD player (for those whose televisions aren’t hooked into their computers).
A final tip for all digital media: save multiple copies of all these to multiple locations. “For example, your home computer would be one location; I think an external hard drive is always a smart bet because computers crash all the time,” says Kristin. “I personally believe that storing it with a cloud provider is critical to ensure that your media never gets lost or erased. If you have your files backed up into different locations, no matter what disaster strikes, (computer crash, floods, fire, moving) you will always have a copy safe somewhere.”
Our friends at Larsen Digital are experts at digitizing your precious memories. They can also do restoration! They specialize in slides, negatives, movie film, video tape, photos, audio, and more. Bonus! Here’s a coupon code for Larsen Digital:
Use code GenGem for 15% off! Visit https://larsendigital.com/lisa.html
More Photo Resources
How to Organize Your Hard Drive, Episodes 32 and 33 of the free Family History Made Easy podcast
Looking for more reunion tips? Check out my post, 
Recently, digital conversion expert Kristin Harding of Larsen Digital joined us on the Genealogy Gems podcast to answer questions and share top tips for digitizing old home movies and photographs. Here’s some of her advice: