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 The following is a Search Guide for using Ancestry.com and their Search Screens & Parameters for searching

Census Searching

The SurnameThesaurus has 146,144,187 entries for 2,978,220 distinct Surnames - The NameThesaurus uses NameX technology to identify name variants with significantly higher Precision and Recall than Soundex or Metaphone.

 

"the road of genealogy maybe of leaves and soft sand....which many brick walls abound the next turn or fork in the road." by. D.R. "Doc" Begnal-Young

 

Back to Genealogy Assistance Request Lookup

 

From this initial Advance Search screen shows the basic search information needed to begin.  You can see there are 2 choices for Spelling, Exact and Soundex.  Where did they live and the Countries listed to the right.  Also further down this screen is Record Types to chose.

 

Ancestry Main Screen

 

Using just the Last Name of Washington, All Countries, All Record Types the screens to follow reflect this search, the amount of hits per item of each Record Type found.  Then depending on the record I am wanting to locate, I will click on the appropriate link and then refine the search

 

Not all record databases will be listed as shown below from an initial search.  Sometimes being specific in selecting a record type or refining the search will show others.

 

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Refine your search by selecting a specific state, keyword i.e. as county/city or use a wildcard in the First or Last Name fields.

 

 

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Immigration Search Fields - also see Refined Search Fields

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List of Immigration & Naturalization Record Databases

 

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Soundex

The Soundex code consists of a letter (always the first letter of the surname) and three numbers. Numbers are assigned according to the following Soundex coding guide:

  Number            Represents letters

     1 .............. B P F V

     2 .............. C S G J K Q X Z

     3 .............. D T

     4 .............. L

     5 .............. M N

     6 .............. R

Push Pin In coding your surname, disregard these letters: A, E, I, O, U, W, Y, and H.

Push Pin Double letters are treated as one letter.

Push Pin On short names, if there are less than three numbers, add zeroes to the end of the coding.

Push PinOn long names, once you have three digits, disregard any additional ones.

Push Pin If your surname has a prefix such as van, Van, Von, D', de, De, dela, Di, du, or Le, code it both with and without the prefix because it might be listed under either code.

Push Pin Mc and Mac are not considered prefixes in the Soundex.

Push Pin Your surname may have different letters that are side-by-side but have the same number on the Soundex coding guide. For example, in the surname Jackson, 2 is the number for C, K and S. In such cases, these letters are treated as one letter. Jackson is Soundexed as J250, not J222.


Wildcards are special symbols which are used in place of letters or numbers. They can be used to match distinct but similar words. An asterisk "*" replaces zero or more characters, and a question mark "?" replaces exactly one character. For example, a search for "fran*" will return matches on words like "Fran,” “Franny,” or “Frank.” A search for "Johns?n" matches "Johnson" and "Johnsen," but not "Johnston."

Here are some suggestions on how you can better use wildcards to complete your search:

  • Use more characters before the wildcard. For example, use Able* instead of Abl*.
    There must be at least 3 characters before any wildcard.

  • Specify both a first and last name or a partial first and last name.

  • Try using the single-character wildcard "?" rather than the multiple-character wildcard "*".
    (e.g., using "Hans?n" matches both "Hansen" and "Hanson" rather than using "Hans*").

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To Census Year Search Screens 1790-1930

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