Genealogy Chat

Sometimes I have searched and searched and am unable to find what I am looking for. I use Ancestry and Familysearch. I post a 'help' on here and some wonderful, kind person finds exactly what I am looking for....SO....what am I doing wrong/not doing, or have they got something i have not??? Kathlyn

The best thing to do is to ask them, after they have found the entry for you!! Every search tends to be conducted differently, so it's difficult to generalise. However, sometimes people don't find what they are looking for because they are too specific with the info they type in.... eg If I was looking for Catherine I would only look for Cath* because it's often spelled Catharine If I was looking for Susannah I would only enter Sus*....in case she was only called Susan. With misspellings it is often the vowels which are wrong. If a name has ''er'' on the end I would often leave that off incase it had been entered ''or'' or ''ar'' etc. etc etc Merry

Merry, Thanks mate, i will give it a try. Yes, I think I am being far too precise, so I will 'slob' a little in future. Kathlyn

The above is probably even more applicable for placenames. Also, the further someone is from their place of birth, the less specific they tend to be about where they came from! So, if you live in Bethnal Green you say you were born there, but if you move to Nottingham you say you were born in London! Some large cities don't have a county in the place of birth records on the census records on Ancestry. So, if someone says they were born in Birmingham, don't put Warwickshire in the county box (at least, don't, unless you can't find them using Birm*) Merry

I think its a question of doing lots and lots of searches until you get the hang of what works/doesn't work. It may seem easy, but most of what I know was learned through blood, sweat, toil, tears and a few swearwords!!! And yes, I still have people I can't find on the census! nell