Genealogy Chat

Scozzie - Re "Saves time anyway, as we have to re-enter all the info."

No, we don't. Say I look at a collection like:
Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950
and I enter a surname, say Slessor
I get 1388 hits - but on the page(s) of hits, off to left is a "refine your search" panel, so I can choose residence=Aberdeenshire and cut the # of hits way down to 1281 (well I didn't really expect otherwise). I can refine more and add parents names = William & Christian and out pop my g grandad's aunts and uncles - seems his mum and a couple of her sibs weren't baptized.

When I first searched for them on the old site, I would have to try Slessor/Slesser/Slessar, but later on, the old site improved. Years ago, I bought the LDS transcription of the 1881 census - this had a couple of discs for Scotland - ScotlandsPeople used to sell this 1881 transcription for 1 credit as they hadn't imaged that back then. Along with all the data files were some auxiliary files - if you looked at them, they would have a lookup table that converted Bill, Will, Willm, Wm into William for the duration of a search, then it would go back to output the results as transcribed. There was no Jane=Jean, (nor Janet=Jessie, Grace=Grizel, etc - obviously the table compiler had no Scottish experience). I don't know if they still do a table lookup as part of the search.

Hi Kathy - My Gilchrists go back a long way in Scotland, except for the Gilchrists who from Cornwall and they are descended from Scots anyway!

The LDS site. I use it the way it lets me. :-D I don't get results if I don't use " * " - I use it the way I was advised by LDS by telephone. and email.

If I get no results I have to go Back, and the spaces are blank, so I have to enter the info again.

That reminds me....... sometimes "Gilchrist" appears as "Gilkerson"