Can’t find George Smith but his brother is Hezekiah Smith?  Well go look for Hezekiah.  Looking for the uncommon names in a family can be more fruitful than those pesky common names.

Who were your ancestor’s siblings and parents?

Maybe there are living with Grandparents, Cousins, or Aunts and Uncles.

And if that doesn’t work, try searching for Neighbors in the previous or successive census.  Maybe they are there, but the transcription is not matching your search.

Previous tip: Search Tip #19: Last or First Name

Happy Searching!

Ancestry Anne

This particular technique is most useful on a single data collection, and if it is a large one you might want to limit it to a specific place.

Let’s say you’ve looked for your ancestor Joshua Chamberlain and you just cannot find him.  Enter all of your data and then omit the first name and search.  This will help you find candidates that might be him but have really poorly transcribed first names.  Then you can enter the first name and enter the last name.  Same idea.

You can also try this if you are looking for a wife and you don’t know her maiden name.  This will give you a list of candidates that might possibly be here.

Next tip: Search Tip #20: Look for Family Members or review the previous tip: Search Tip #18: Review the Search Form

Happy Searching!

Ancestry Anne

Sometimes it is best to start searching form the search form for a specific data collection.  The form tells you what has been indexed which is critical in understanding what to enter.

 Take for example the US Federal Census 1850 search form:

Relationships are indexed, because they are explicitly stated, so you can’t use that as a search strategy.

On a census form, if you enter a county and stage from our type ahead for places and then choose exact, you will limit all of your searches to that county.  Or you can choose adjacent county if you are not finding who you are looking for.

Also, you can set other fields to exact to limit your searches as well.  By looking at the form, you understand what is actually indexed and this will help you choose what is appropriate to use as parameters in your search.

Next tip: Search Tip #19: First or Last Name Searches  or review the previous tip: Search Tip #17: Search from Your Tree

Happy Searching!

Ancestry Anne

There are a lot of reasons to use online trees, especially now that you can sync between FTM 2012 and online, but one I particularly like is that using your tree you can pre-populate your search.

Let’s say you are on a page for Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. (I’m not related to this famous Union Soldier, I just use Civil War Generals as an example tree.)

Right underneath his icon, you’ll see the Search Records link:

Click on that link, and we do a search for you with everything you know about Joshua pre-populated in the search.

If you want to change the information, click on the Edit Search button.  And you can apply any of the tips and tricks we have discussed to this type of search.

Next tip: Search Tip #18: Read the Form or review the previous tip: Search Tip #16: Use Facets

Happy Searching!

Ancestry Anne

Try wildcards with Restrict to Exact selected (see Search Tip #11 - Name Filters) to find unusual spellings of names.

There are two wildcard characters:

• ? (question mark) : matches one character which can be anything
• * (asterisk) : matches 0 to N characters

So if you enter Sm?th* you can match Smith, Smyth, Smithe and Smythe

Ann* will match Ann, Anne, Anna, and Annabelle

My maiden name is Gillespie, and it is very often spelled: Gillaspie, Gillispie or Gillespie or even Gillespy.

I can use wildcards to match a variety of combinations.

Look for Search #14: Limit Your Scope  or review yesterday’s tip: Search Tip #12 : Location Filters

Happy Searching!

Ancestry Anne