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Genealogy Search Tips

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1) There are times to search for specific years and there are times when we should not. Many searches on genealogy web-sites allow users to include more than just a specific year as a part of their search. Before you mindlessly enter some search terms and click "search" think about that year and that range you entered.

2) If you know (reasonably) that a relative immigrated to the United States in 1850, you may want to search for 1850 immigrations allowing for an error of plus or minus two or five years, depending upon how reliable you think the 1850 date of immigration is. It may be necessary to broaden the search even more.

3) If you are searching for someone in the 1860 census whom you think was born in 1840, you may want to search for them as being twenty years of age, plus or minus a few years, again depending upon how reliable you think the year of birth is. The older a person is, the more likely their age is to be incorrect.

4) Newspapers may be a little different. Some would run a "days beyond recall" column, where items from 20, 30, or even 50 years earlier were re-published in the newspaper. Consequently a death notice from 1890 may appear in a 1940 edition of the paper. Do not assume that a reference to your ancestor 40 years after his death cannot be his. It may be that the paper is rerunning part of an earlier notice. Death notices typically do not appear thirty years before a death, but they may occasionally appear thirty years after.

5) Think about the record you are searching. How accurate does that date need to be? And it is possible that the range of years you are searching for needs to be larger than you think?

6) Are hard to read images giving you a fit? I have translucent poly file folders in various colors. I’ve found that if I hold the yellow one up to my monitor screen it makes hard- to-read images much easier to read. This works well with microfilm readers too. You can find these folders at any office supply store.

7) It certainly does help if one pays attention to all of the details when searching for an ancestor. For example, I could not read the entry on my great grandfather's ship manifest, but when I saw who met him at the dock, I remembered my mom saying she had cousins by the same name. Then I knew I had the correct manifest.

8) Also think about variations in spelling, sometimes the census takers or immigration just simply spelled names incorrectly such as Eulah ~ Yula. Another thing about names is that the spelling of some names changed over the years, for instance Smith or Smythe. And then you have to be aware of possible nicknames that may have been used, for instance Elizabeth may have been called, Beth, Betty, Betsy, Eliza, Lizzie, lots of possibilities! And little girls named Mary Elizabeth were often given the nickname of Polly or Molly. Then you have nicknames that developed from a child not being able to pronounce a name correctly, I had a great aunt that was called Nean because when she was a child she could not say "Madgelene" it came out Nean so that was what she was called her entire life and showed that way on the census sometimes. Last but not least, when the census taker ask for a name and say it was Jim Bob your grandpa. The census taker may have only written the initials JB. or only the first name Jim, and if he was called Bob or Bobby all of his life you might not recognize him on the census. These are very real and reoccurring facts in genealogy searching that you need to be aware of when you are investigating an individual.

Happy Hunting!!!!