Ancestry search

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Winkworth on January 5, 2010 at 10:18am

Charles: Well expressed! This was a topic of discussion at a recent genealogy group meeting. Although this concern has been expressed before it appears as though Ancestry is not listening.

Permalink Reply by Sharon Farr on January 5, 2010 at 10:46am

I have had the same problem, even when its been a more general search but I have the date of death in the 1800's giving me a record in the 1980's is hardly going to be right!

Permalink Reply by Myss Story on January 5, 2010 at 12:29pm

Hi, I've found that this happens when there is no exact match for the name entered. In my searches, the main problem is that the transcription is often way off. I am looking for someone named "Gertrude Oakman" in 1901 England. I know she was still alive, because she appears in 1911 census. I havent found her yet, but I have found the G old style is misread routinely as Pertrude among other common misreadings as in Lerhude, Yerlude and Serlude. Apparently modern transcribers are not familiar with the old capital G. I've given up on the Oakman part because it can be Dahmer, or Cakmar.

Now, the wider, exact search works much better with a wild card like the underscore. So if I search for _trude I can get a list of mistranscribed names that ordinary searches spread out. I can find from 10 to 100 bad spellings. Then that wide list works pretty well. Letters like J are often read as T or F or even S. Even though it often makes no sense that someone would spell an ordinary name that way, like Tames or Fames. And if the enumerator used an abbreviation, like Jno for John, that complicates it. Odder names like Mimosa, which is a tropical flower, but apparently the transcribers don't take such things into account, are badly mangled. I found a Mimosa, born in Central America, but it took some doing. The oddness of the name helped. She married young, and three times, so the last names were not so easy. So I use the "wide alphbetical listing" that Ancestry does as an indicator my exact match doesnt match what is in the name.

What I do in this case is use the wild card for the last name only, with wild cards for the most common misread letters, ie G or J, with the year set for exact, and the place as just the state, since places were changing in the early 1800s. It's just as easy to scan a list of potentials. I'll find my Gertrude yet, and her son Arthur, which is amazingly spelled Author, Auter, and so on. I know they're in there, it just takes digging. Other times, Ancestry just drops relatives into my search like butter, that I just get jazzed and forgive the less easy research. I used to work in business with names databases, so I know how they can be mispelled. And I'm not even addressing non-English names. But, there are still customary spellings for that time.
Good Hunting!


So the problem with the exact search is that it can't find mistranscriptions.

Permalink Reply by Charles Donaghe on January 5, 2010 at 1:45pm

You are exactly right about it not finding mistranscriptions. I expect that. However,When I say look between 1860 and 1870 for a marriage between two people and I say I want an exact match, I donot want to see marriages from the 1950's, 1960's or 1970's.
When I searching for the marriage between William Casey and Elizabeth Taylor when had to happen between 1860 and 1870 I do not want marriage to see marriages between William Casey and Rebecca Armstrong in 1952. (now the Rebecca Armstrong) was made up for an example but that is the results you get. In addiation that marriage happened in New Yourk state and not Arkansas that was selected.
Also many times when you search for a name in the census and you select a state and a year the result should reflect that NOT names fro any other state.
I don't think this is too much to ask for a search engine. All I ask is if I select the parameters I want the engine to honor those parameters. If it can not make a match then tell me and I will adjust the parameters the way I want.

Permalink Reply by Myss Story on January 5, 2010 at 7:50pm

I agree, searching can be quite frustrating. I am not affiliated with Ancestry.com except as a subscriber. I was just explaining how I've found to work with their search engine to get past some of the quirks with some success.

Permalink Reply by Mavis Jones on January 9, 2010 at 8:11am

I agree with you. This has happened to me on numerous occassions.