Tracing ancestors as far back as possible has brought to many people great satisfaction and pleasure. Even documenting one’s family thoroughly for but a few generations can prove just as exciting and fulfilling as a more sketchy documentation across two or three centuries. Each individual ancestral relative previously unknown and genealogically discovered is its own special thrill! No less thrilling is the discovery of records rich with information, which would have remained untouched or which would never have come to light, unless you had gotten caught up in the multiple, magnetic lures of genealogy.
But do you get bogged down when doing on-line research?   There is an article at Genealogy in Time, A Guide to Performing Online Genealogy Searches , designed to help you get the most out of your ancestral searches using both  the free Genealogy Search Engine and Family Tree Search Engine. These two dedicated genealogy search engines are the most powerful free ones available on the internet.

Happy searching!

A recent blog post by Lorine McGinnis Schulze asks the question, “Why do we do genealogy”.  The answer should be simple. One would think it would be something along the lines of:

“I do genealogy because I want to know who my ancestors were.”

But guess what? Like most questions in life, the answer is not that simple. There are a myriad of reasons why we delve into genealogy research. Wanting to find out who our ancestors were is just the tip of the genealogy iceberg.

In her article Lorine goes on to explain how our reasons change over time.   It is a thoughtful and insightful look into our reasons for “doing” genealogy.   Please click here to read her entire article.

When you know what goes on behind the scenes when you push that search button, you are going to be a much better searcher and you’re going to get better results, said Anne Gillespie Mitchell of Ancestry.com. Anne gave a presentation titled “Become a Master Searcher on Ancestry” at RootsTech 2016. Anne has worked for Ancestry for seven years, including some time as the Search product manager.

Say you search for John Smith, lived in Virginia, and born in 1879. Ancestry searches more than 16 billion records and it finds every record with first name “John.” It finds every record with last name “Smith.” It finds every record mentioning any place in Virginia. And it finds every record with a birthdate close to 1879. Ancestry combines all four of these groups, which is why you get 38 million results. It is possible to get just the results you want by telling the search engine what you want it to do. “You have to know how to talk to the search engine,” she said.

Anne gave us several tips on how to do that.

Tip #1: Start with the basic facts. Starting a search from your family tree has its place, but sometimes it pulls in so many results, it’s hard to find something in particular. There are times when you should start from scratch, specifying just four basic facts: first name, last name, a date, and a place.

Tip #2: Understand how names are searched. “If you know how to control them with filters, you will have control of your results, and you will start finding who you’re looking for,” Anne said. After entering a name, click Exact under the name and set name filtering to work the way you want it to work. The name filters are sticky. Whatever you set them to will continue to be used on subsequent searches.

Be aware that the last name must appear in some form in each result, but the first name doesn’t have to unless you tell it to.

Tip #3: Wildcards are a powerful tool for dealing with name variations. Anne uses “G*L*SP*” to search for variations in her Gillespie maiden name.

Tip #4: Location can be a key search term. The location of an event is often highly accurate. This is because events were usually recorded where they occurred and since indexers are not keying in a different location for every record, Ancestry can set the location without a lot of errors.

When you are searching a census and you know the county, put it in the “Lived In” field. (“Lived in” and “residence” are the same.) Start by specifying your location as exactly as possible. Include district name and number in the keyword field. (Anything that appears anywhere in the record details that can’t be specified in a search field can be searched in the keyword field.)

If you specify location for “Any event,” all records will be returned that specify that location in the record in any capacity.

Tip #5: Filter by location. This is a capability you may not be familiar with because few websites besides Ancestry offer it. Select the location from the dropdown list. Then use the filters to include nearby locations. This helps because our ancestors sometimes crossed county or state lines to do something like marrying or recording a deed.

Tip #6: Limit your scope. At the bottom of the search form you can exclude trees, photos, or stories and publications. The setting is sticky, so it will be used for subsequent searches.

Tip #7: Use Collection priority to set the national focus. This is useful for focusing research in the records of a particular country, such as England or Canada. Be careful, this setting is also sticky.

Tip #8: Search records by type. Certain types of records, like census records, easily float to the top of Ancestry search results. However, some record types, like military records that lack a birthdate and residence, may never be found by global searches. Anne recommends searching by record type. Census records are a good type to search first.

To search military records by conflict, visit http://www.ancestry.com/cs/militaryrecords. That is the only page on the site where that is possible.

Tip #9: Use the Category result list. Above the top search result is the choice to see results by records or by categories. Select categories to see which collections have matching records.

Tip #10: Search a single collection. Searching a single collection is another good way to avoid thousands of unwanted results. The search form shows what fields were indexed for that collection and often include fields not available in the global search form.

Tip #11: Read the collection description. The collection may not include the records you need; the description may warn you of that. It will tell you where the collection came from, which helps you decide how trustworthy the information is.

”Control your results and learn how to do it really well,” Anne said. “You’re going to find more things.”

View Anne’s complete presentation on the RootsTech website.

Source:  Ancestry Insider

There is an extension for Chrome called RootsSearch, which can search for your ancestors from multiple websites as show below.

It is a very well-kept secret, but something you may want to add to your Chrome Browser.

Once the extension has been added to Chrome, click on the roots search icon            on the top toolbar. A new search window will open as shown below:

Fill in the search boxes with the appropriate information as shown in the graphic above.   Click on one of the available sites. In the example below FamilySearch was chosen.  A new tab will then open and in this case shows a list of results for historical records that may be relevant to the information provided.

Go back to the Roots Search window, choose a different site and you may find even more results!

At present the extension is only available for Chrome, but the developers plan in the future add it to Firefox.   For more information on RootsSearch, read the developer’s blog.

Good luck with finding more information about your ancestors!

The latest Legacy Family Tree software newsletter had a tip for using the Upper Canada Sundries.

When researching your ancestors have you ever found blocked when trying to find an ancestor? You’ve found great-grandpa in all the usual records such as census, births, marriages and deaths but now you are at the proverbial brick wall?

There are more less obvious genealogy records available.  Depending on the location and years you need, you may be surprised to find a wealth of other more obscure records.

To continue on for the information on researching Upper Canada Sundries, please read the complete article from the Legacy News article.

Happy Researching!