Genealogy Chat

Judith (above) suggests that it is the addition of names in manuscript that messes up the Ancestry indices to the BMD images, and that may be true in a small number of cases, but by no means all. I have been trawling through many years, looking for names that I know exist, but +/- many years. It is laughable how often a particular year has one or two quarters missing, and yet the names are present on the actual images with page after page that has no manuscript addition. In programming terms it is very easy to look at the letters of a name, and decide whether the sequence is before or after any other sequence. If Ancesty have indexed their images by the first and last name on each page, then they sould sack their programmer, because it just doesn't work.

Thank you every one for all your messages I will copy and print info to keep. Regards Dotty

The reason they appear to be missing is that Ancestry index them by first and last name on page - Logical you would think but if the last name is one which has been added later, with an insertion point higher up the page they still use it. Hence a page with names between Adams and Allen might appear to have no one later in the alphabet than Alan if this name has been inserted late at the foot of the page. The only way to find those Allen names would be to search on a name starting with the same two letters as the one you want and then use page forward or back buttons to get to the correct page.

Alternatively you could put the first three letters of the surname then * and search that way. I found patricia smiths birth that way. You still need to search all the names beginning with the first three letters, though it is possible to skip a number of pages to shorten the search. Good luck Keith

It is a problem with Ancestry, when you get the page where their are missing quarters, click on the year at the top of the page and all the available quarters will be their, you will then need to click on the quarter you are interested in and then on the first letter of the surname that you are looking for, then search page by page. Roy

Dotty what name are you looking for? Georgina.

Does anyone know why months are missing off Ancestry I can only find 1938 jan/march and July/september for the name I am looking for thank you for any info.