Sometimes you can't find your ancestor, but they're waiting to be discovered. Today I'm going
to talk to you about two advanced online genealogy database search strategies to help you find your
ancestors. Howdy, I'm Devon Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics, where we love to help you
climb your family tree and have a lot of fun along the way. Be sure you always check out
the description for links to our blog, our webinars, and a lot of other goodies that
will be of interest to you. So I'm going to share with you two advanced online search
strategies where you can find your ancestors in searchable collections. We do talk about
browsing images, and there's a link to that video in the description. But your ancestor might be in
the search forms. You just have to change how you search for them. Now the strategies I'm going to
feature do apply to Ancestry and FamilySearch. And I'll tell you which one has a little more trouble
as we go along. you can try these strategies on any genealogically relevant website that has
searchable collections. The two that come to my mind right now are Findmypast and MyHeritage.
But I know you can try it on just about anything that has a search form. First, let's talk about a
couple of the reasons why you're not finding your ancestor in the search forms. The first one should
be fairly obvious to experienced researchers. But making sure everybody is on the same page.
Our ancestors' names were not always spelled the same. They weren't consistent. My last
name Geiszler is spelled more of the ways than I can count. And it doesn't always begin with a K.,
So I have to use wildcard searches, which I'll link to a video in the description for your help.
If you need help with wildcard searches. But a lot of times, the names are misspelled, and that's why
you're not finding your ancestor. Another cause of trying, not finding your ancestor, is that the
person who recorded the record had really bad handwriting. And so, the indexer who typed the
information into your searchable database did the very best they could. So blame the handwriter, not
the indexer. There also could be a situation when somebody created a record, and they had the wrong
name attached to your relative. It could be the wrong first name. It could be the wrong middle
name. It could be the wrong surname. Regardless they're not on, in the records under the name that
you expected them to have. The other problems is that records are damaged from water, fire,
flood, inkblots, who knows. And sometimes, that damage will corrupt the ability to see your
ancestor's name. The rest of the details are there for them. But you can't read their stinking name!
So there are some strategies to try to find out where they're hiding. Now before you start diving
into the records to try a No Name or a No Surname Search, you need to review what you actually
do know about your ancestors. Now, in this case, we're actually going to talk about Elizabeth Jane
Weakly Pitney Sparks or Jane Weakly Sparks. She has a lot of last names. I'm missing her
in the 1900 census. That's my question. Where did Jane, Elizabeth Jane, go in 1900? The first
strategy is called a No Name search. And this is something you can achieve more easily on Ancestry
than on FamilySearch. FamilySearch requires at least one name. So we're here on Ancestry,
and I need to get to the collection that will most likely answer the question I have. Where is
Jane in the 1900 census? If she lives in Ohio and Missouri, she's somewhere in the United States,
so I want to get to a US Census Collection. Now I'm going, to be honest. When I want to
find something quickly, I use Google. And I'll type 1900 US Federal Census and type Ancestry.
And this gets me quickly into the collection that I want. Don't tell anybody on Ancestry. That's how
I do it. So here I'm in the 1900 US Census, but a federal census. And I am not going to put anything
in this field. Because I've tried her name. I tried various combinations, and she's just not
showing up. So instead, what I'm going to do is type the year 1818. And I'm gonna limit it to just
plus one year. She could be 1817 or 1819. And I'm gonna leave the birth location off for now. She
happened to live in West Virginia. And depending on the record, it could be West Virginia was where
she was born or Virginia was where she was born. It just all kind of depends on who's doing the
recording. But I do know she possibly lived in Howard County, Missouri. So I'm going to type
that in Howard County, Missouri. And I'm going to click Exact. I want this place. I don't want any
other place, just Howard County, Missouri. And I'm going to go and click on another search at
the bottom. Now I'll be honest. What I really do is hit the Enter button. And then it usually goes.
There we go. Now, this isn't so bad. She's born in 1818, and she could be living in Howard County,
Missouri. There's 33 entries, and I can look to see, do any of these names stand out?
I'm looking for names that might have been her FAN- her parents, her siblings, her children.
Something that gender or the same thing with a surname, any neighbors. Because again,
she could be under their a wrong name. But it was probably a name that I would recognize.
Unless you change your name, which is a different story for another day. So as I scrolled through 33
names, it didn't jump out anything. Nothing really jumped out at me. So another thing I could do
is I can expand the county. I can expand to just the state and update. And back
out and try different locations. But one of the problems is I get to
4,885 search results. And on Ancestry, there's no way here really to filter these results by
gender or some other key factors. So what I'm going to do, instead of continuing with this No
Name search. Is I'm going to go do a different search. The reason why I wanted to point out
this strategy is that on Ancestry, they have come across records where there was No Name
recorded. Or remember those ink blocks or damaged pages that I told you about earlier? And so they
will record a No Name person in a collection with these details. And they will show up
with this field over here where it says name. And there won't be a name. So Ancestry actually does
have and encourage people to do a No Name search. But just make sure you're looking in a specific
location in a specific record collection for you to have any chance of success.
If you thought the first one might take a lot of time, this next one takes a lot of time. But
if you're trying to leave no stone unturned and you can't find your stubborn ancestor,
it may pay to do this search. Now, as it implies, it means searching without a Surname. So unlike
No Names in the given name, in the surname field. This is a search with at least
a first name. As I said, this is going to be a No Surname Search. So I'm going to type in Elizabeth.
What's really great is you don't always have to put a wild card. They're starting to do
fuzzy searches or wildcard searches for the various ways that Elizabeth shows up in records.
And they also pick up common nicknames like Lizzy, which is great. So just type in what you know.
I typed in a birthplace of Virginia, in the birth year of 1817 to 1818,
and I'm going to click search. Each time I've run this search, I've actually gotten
a different search results number. So when I write the blog post to go along with this, um, video,
there was 1,700 names. Now there's 258- 2,580 names. But we are limited to the 1900 census.
So how can we actually narrow it down and make it a little more manageable to look for on Elizabeth
with no surname? Because we're still looking at a lot of names. What's really great about
FamilySearch is you're allowed to filter by a number of different things. And I'm going to
filter by gender first. So I'm going to filter to female. And now I'm down to about 1,700 names. Now
what I'm going to do is. Believe it or not, even though I put the range of 1817 to 1818,
FamilySearch is still giving me more results than I need. So I'm going to come down here and go to
birth year- 1800. And after I do that now, I have 351 names. So now what I can do is I can either
change from view 20 names to 50 names to 100. I'm actually gonna search a list of 100 names because
then I just have a few pages to look through. And I'm going to start looking for anything that
jumps out at me. Now you may have trouble keeping track of all of those names of possibilities. And
this is when a surname table might come in handy. But remember, that tracks Elizabeth's ancestral
names. So go ahead and pull out the surname table. But also write down the names of in-laws
for her siblings, in-laws for her children, and her neighbor's last names from when she lived
in the different places she lived. She lived in Howard County, Missouri, and Licking County,
Ohio. So I can write down the neighbors there because maybe she went to another location with
the neighbor or with her children. When I stumbled across this name, because I'm just scanning, I,
I'm not diving record by record. First, I'm just scanning. When I came across Elizabeth Blue,
my genealogy spidey senses started tingling. Because I noticed this female's name of Matilda.
And I knew that Elizabeth had a daughter named Matilda. And I thought her husband's name was
Blue. So before I checked into this record, I went and looked at my other sources. Ure enough,
Matilda had married a John. I hadn't figured out where they'd moved to after they left Ohio.
And they actually moved to South Carolina. Now just because the names look good doesn't
mean that's our record. So we're gonna actually dive into things a little bit better. John Blue
from Virginia could be West Virginia, but he's from Virginia. Matilda Blue born in Ohio. William
R Blue born in Ohio. Lines up. Age lines up. Elizabeth Blue- grandmother from Virginia.
Now I had to go one step further and make sure that I did Descendancy Research on John and
family research on John. John does not have a grandmother named Elizabeth, and he does not have
a mother named Elizabeth. So the only possible grandmother left would be the grandmother
which would be the mother of Matilda. And so I finally found them. Now I hope that you will
give these strategies a try when you're looking for your ancestors, and you just can't find them.
you never know. They might show up. If you want more tips and tricks on how to search online,
be sure to check out this playlist right here. And if you're ready for something new,
check out this one right here, the colorado beef burritos again today, and I was wondering
if he should have something else, yes and if he's not going to change, he can wait,
okay I don't know if I should use that one as a blooper.