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.
You will all feel a little lucky this week with new and updated genealogical records for Ireland and several states across the U.S. Records from Nevada, Nebraska, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota are on the list. Updates to two of the Freedmen’s Bureau record collections will wrap up this week’s records you can dig into.
IRELAND – RECORDS, GUIDES, AND BOOKS
The New England Historical and Genealogical Society is offering access to their Irish resources for FREE for a limited time. So hurry before it ends on August 9th and see what luck you have digging up your Irish ancestors.
You will need to sign-up, but remember, it’s free. Once you have logged on, you will begin your search here.
Many Irish researchers have difficulty finding records because of the destruction of the Public Record Office in 1922. Not only can you browse the records available, but also the subject guides and books for Irish genealogy.
UNITED STATES – PENNSYLVANIA – NATURALIZATION RECORDS
The Chester County, Pennsylvania website has made their naturalization indexes available for the year span of 1798-1935. To search their indexes is free, but there is no name search field. You may have to scan several pages to find the record that may interest you. The database is also available to search from Ancestry.com and allows you to search by name, date of event, and place of origin.
The index of naturalizations include the name of the individual, name of native country, and a date. The original record could hold additional information. You can request a copy of the original record from their webpage. To learn more about that, click here.
UNITED STATES – NEVADA – MARRIAGE & DIVORCE
The most difficult records too find are often those that were created within the last 50 years. Due to the scarcity of recent records, we are pleased to see Ancestry has added a new database titled Nevada, Marriage Certificates, 2002-2015. You can search by name, date, location, and spouses name.
The digital image of the marriage records differs from year to year and location to location, but generally, you will find the couples’ names, ages, date and location of the marriage, and the person who officiated the wedding.
Nevada, Divorce Records, 1968-2015 has recently been updated on Ancestry as well. This index includes nearly half a million divorce records. You can use the index to locate the county the divorce took place, and then contact that county for the original records. You won’t find the reason for divorce in this index, but you can find the county of divorce and the divorce file number that will help locate the further records you want.
UNITED STATES – NEBRASKA – PASSENGER LISTS
A passenger list database for Omaha, Nebraska? Yep, but these are passenger and crew lists of air manifests between the years of 1958-1965. The collection is titled Omaha, Nebraska, Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes, 1958-1965. If your Omaha relative did a lot of air travel, these records may be of interest to you. These records were were recorded on a variety of forms turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Some details included the name of the airline, type of aircraft, flight number, places of departure and arrival, dates of departure and arrival, full name, age, gender, physical description, military rank (if any), occupation, birthplace, citizen of what country, and residence. For military transports, you may even find the next of kin, relationships, and addresses. Later, manifests may include visa or passport numbers.
UNITED STATES – MINNESOTA – PASSENGER LISTS
The same is true in this database, Minnesota, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1957-1962 at Ancestry. This collection includes both air travel and ships coming into Minnesota ports. The original records were originally digitized by the National Archives and Records Administration. Information you may collect from these digital images include:
Name
Age
Gender
Ethnicity, nationality or last country of permanent residence
Destination
Arrival date
Port of arrival
Port of departure
Ship name
UNITED STATES – GEORGIA – BONDS AND LICENSES
Ancestry has added the Savannah, Georgia, Licenses and Bonds, 1837-1909 database this week. You will find digital images of records from the City of Savannah’s Clerk of Council relating to people and businesses. These records usually include the name of person’s name, occupation, name of business, record date, record place, and subject.
Special thanks to the New England Historic Genealogical Society and the Archdiocese of Boston for their effort to make Sacramental records for genealogy available online. These and other new and updated genealogical collections are mentioned in this weeks list from the United States, Ireland, United Kingdom, Italy, and free record searches at Findmypast!
United States (New England area) & Canada – Sacramental Records for Genealogy
NEHGS has announced the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) and Archdiocese of Boston have made millions of 18th and 19th century sacramental records searchable online.
The records, which document baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and other sacraments, cover more than 150 parishes from throughout eastern Massachusetts. They also hold records that were carried out in other locations in New England and parts of Canada.
These detailed documents are a critical resource for researchers, historians, and genealogists, especially when secular records are unavailable. They record important moments in the lives of the individuals, families, and communities.
Though the fully searchable data will not be available immediately, anyone can browse images of parish records as they are completed. Click here to learn how to browse records.
United States – Oklahoma- Vital Records
Ok2Explore is a free searchable index of births and deaths that occurred in the state of Oklahoma. Only limited information is available for births occurring more than 20 years ago and deaths occurring more than 5 years ago.
Visitors to the site may search the index using any combination of the subject’s name, date of event (birth or death,) county of event, and sex of the subject.
Remember this is only an index version of the record, but you can order certified copies for a fee.
With over 227,700 new records, the petty sessions handled the bulk of lesser criminal and civil legal proceedings in Ireland. Ireland, Petty Sessions Court Registers now contains over 22.8 million records and is the largest collection of Irish court & prison records available anywhere online. Each record includes a transcript and a scanned image of the original document. These documents will include details of victims, witnesses and the accused, such as an address, date in court, details of the offence, details of the verdict, and the sentence.
Cases range from merchants who had not paid duty on their goods, to workers suing for unpaid wages. Farmers were sometimes fined for letting their cattle wander or for allowing their cart to be driven without their name painted on the side. Public drunkenness was a common offence, as was assault and general rowdiness. Though these records are not considered typical for finding vital information, they can work as great clues to lead you to the information you need.
United Kingdom – Dorset – Memorial Inscriptions
The Dorset Memorial Inscriptions collection at Findmypast contains over 40,000 new records. The collection contains details of inscriptions found on gravestones, tombs, monuments and even stained glass windows throughout 266 parishes within English county.
Each record includes a transcript. The information contained varies, however, most will include a combination of birth year, death year, burial date and location, relative’s names, memorial type and notes on the inscription.
United Kingdom – Warwickshire – Burials
Also at Findmypast, over 175,000 new records have been added to the Warwickshire Burials. The entire collection now contains more 1 million records and includes monumental inscriptions from Clifton Road Cemetery in Rugby.
Each record includes a transcript of the original burial registry or details from the monumental inscription. While the information listed will vary depending on the records original source, most will include your ancestor’s name, age, birth year, death date, burial year, burial location and the name of the officiating minister. A number of records will also include parent’s names and residence. Inscriptions will include information recorded on the individual’s grave stone and will usually include the name of the individual’s spouse, children and/or parents. Also, some grave sites may have more than one person buried in the same plot.
United Kingdom – Northumberland & Durham – Monumental Inscriptions
Over 16,000 records for the Northumberland & Durham Monumental Inscriptions at Findmypast are now available. These include the full description found on a grave stone or monument which will often include additional family names and dates.
Each record includes a transcript of the original source material. The amount of information may vary due to the age and legibility of individual monuments, but most records will include birth date, burial year, burial place, death date, denomination, inscription, and even the type of stone their monument was made from.
Ireland – Quaker Congregational Records
Also at Findmypast, Ireland, Society Of Friends (Quaker) Congregational Records has been updated with an additional 5,000 congregational records. Congregational records include details of the meetings your ancestor’s attended and the activities they engaged in. This is a nice way to enrich your family story.
These records, dating back to the mid-1600s, include minutes from half-yearly Quaker meetings. Each entry includes an image of the original handwritten record. The information included will vary, but most will include the congregation date, address, meeting, archive and reference.
MyHeritage Year End Review
MyHeritage had some pretty exciting things going on in 2016. In their recent blog post, “A Look Back at 2016,” you will see the list including the MyHeritage mobile app, the introduction of Tribal Quest, the debut of the beautiful Sun Chart, and their recent announcement of MyHeritage DNA, just to name a few. Visit the blog post to see the MyHeritage year-in-review for yourself!
Venezuela – Australia – El Salvador – Philippines – Netherlands – Canada – Spain – Slovenia – U. S. – Italy
FamilySearch.org took a short break over the holidays from updating their collections, but with the start of the new year, they have added and updated over 20 collections from all over the world! Check out these great records:
