Online Search Engines are a Genealogist's Friend

Diane wrote to Olive Tree Genealogy with this question

These 2 ancestors [William and Martha Medcalf] emigrated from Ireland to Ontario Canada in 1819 with 10 children we think. They are from Delgany, Country Wicklow but have not been able to access any information about them before coming to Canada. Much appreciated for any suggestions.

Diane - this is where Google is your friend (or any other search engine you prefer). A quick search using search terms "delgany ireland church records" brought several results indicating that these records are online.

I downloaded the PDF files for the transcribed records of THE PARISH REGISTERS OF CHRIST CHURCH, DELGANY VOLUME 2 BAPTISMS 1777-1819, MARRIAGES 1777-1819 & BURIALS 1777-1819, I found the following baptisms for children of William and Martha:

23 Nov 1809 Eliz’th MEDCALF Will’m/Martha, Downs
27 Jun 1805 John MEDCALF Wm/Martha, Downs
9 Feb 1812 Henry MEDCALF Wm/Martha, Downs
16 Oct 1813 Will’m MEDCALF Wm/Martha, Downs

"Downs" is their residence. I am sure you can find much more by downloading and searching more records.

You should also search the Upper Canada Land Petitions to see if the family applied for land once in Canada. Their petitions may reveal more about their lives in Ireland. You may wish to read my tutorials on searching those petitions and finding the actual images onlline once you have completed your search in the index.

Using Land Petitions to Learn about an Ancestor

Finding an Ancestor in the Challenging Upper Canada Land Books

Searching Ontario Canada Land Records, eh? 

 In fact I did a quick search and here are the results for MEDCALF. Using my tutorials to guide you, you can now find the actual petitions online using the index information for any names below that are of interest.

 

It appears that one of William and Martha's sons (Francis Henry Medcalf) became a mayor in Toronto Ontario. There may be quite a bit of biographical information about him in Toronto archives or libraries.

A Second Way to Search for Canadian Burials and Cemeteries on Find-A-Grave!

Olive Tree Genealogy received this note yesterday:

Lorine, I've created a front-end for Canadians to use to search for cemeteries either by province or county using clickable maps. This is useful for either finding a cemetery to browse or to ensure a cemetery does not exist under a different name when creating monuments.  Regards, Bruce Gordon

I checked it out and it's terrific! The first page you see is this map of Canada. I chose ON (Ontario) which is clickable on Bruce's website Stalking the Dead.

 Clicking on ON took me to this page which has a search box and a list of clickable counties in Ontario:

 I typed in VOLLICK into the search box and the results showed all VOLLICK burials in Ontario on Find-A-Grave. What a time-saver this is!

You also have the option of clicking on the county in Ontario (or any other province) and seeing the complete list of cemeteries in that county that are on Find-A-Grave. Choosing Wellington County brought up this:

If you have Canadian ancestors, you will want to try this.  Search Canadian Cemeteries & Burials on Find-A-Grave

Image Credits: Screenshots from Bruce Gordon's website and Find-A-Grave search results

UPDATE: New Way to Search Canadian Burials on Find-A-Grave

This is a really great thing to know if you are looking for a cemetery burial of an ancestor in Canada on the popular Find-A-Grave website. Thanks to Gail Dever for talking about this on her Genealogy à la carte blog

Gail tells us that "Designed by Ken Lange, the Canadian search page allows you to narrow down your search by name and province, or cemetery and province, and this certainly simplifies the research." 

Continue reading  New Canadian way to search Find a Grave  

UPDATE January 24/17: Thanks to Bruce Gordon who writes to me to say: Ken's site was hosted on DropBox which, a few months ago, stopped allowing HTML on their site. So with Ken's permission I moved the page to my site and modified it to permit searching by County or Division within a Province or Territory. My old site and Ken's will remain available for those that prefer them.

More Powerful Free Genealogy Search

The following announcement was sent to Olive Tree Genealogy:

 GenealogyInTime Magazine, the world’s most popular online genealogy magazine, and one of the world’s largest free genealogy websites, is announcing a very significant upgrade to our free Genealogy Search Engine.  It continues to become even more powerful:

·      An additional 532 million free genealogy records from around the world are now searchable.  In total, the Genealogy Search Engine indexes 2.7 billion records from over 1,000 websites.

·      In a first for a genealogy website, the entire Google Newspaper Archive can now be searched by the Genealogy Search Engine.  This extremely valuable archive covers over 2,000 historic newspapers going back as far as the 1700s.

·      The massive Australian Trove archive can now be completely searched with the Genealogy Search Engine.

To learn more about the latest upgrades to the free Genealogy Search Engine, read SearchOver 500 Million More Records.

Learn more about GenealogyInTime Magazine.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Old Search vs New Search - Your Chance to Submit Feedback

Olive Tree Genealogy was recently invited to participate in a Conference Call with Ancestry.com and a few other bloggers to discuss New Search. It was a very educational call and our input was listened to. We also were given the opportunity to participate in the Product Development Team's ideas for improvements in their Search Engine.

As many of you know there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Old Search being "replaced" by New Search. Users of Old Search have expressed their displeasure. In my opinion a lot of the complaints stem, not from logic, but from emotional responses to change.

Many of us dislike change. We often have a great deal of time invested in learning a certain way of doing something. When that changes the natural reaction is to be ticked - "all that time and I like how it works!" 

But change is often a GOOD thing! Change can mean we are getting something better or getting something that will ADD to the experience of the old.

I also noticed that many of those objecting to New Search have not given it a fair trial. In fact one user told me that it was the "perception" that New Search would not give the same results or be as "good" as Old Search that had her riled. But perception is not knowledge. By knowledge I mean the knowledge that comes with trying New Search for a period of time and comparing the results with those you obtained with Old Search. I urge those of my readers who are upset about New Search to give it a try, you might find you prefer it!

The Product Team at Ancestry.com also sent me this email which may help alleviate fears of Old Search users. It is important that we all submit feedback as Ancestry.com has requested. This is how we can help the product developers work WITH us for a top-notch experience when we research. 

In an effort to continually improve your experience on Ancestry.com, we are asking for feedback on our search function. Our plan is first to gather feedback from our core users. We will take all of that feedback into account when we are merging the functionality of Old Search and current search into a consolidated search experience.

You can take the survey here: http://ancestry.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8ubNXU8IiQcxqVD

Many of the recent concerns and comments have cited functionality that actually exists in current search, as well as in old search – specifically:

1. Our current search experience allows users to view search results as a list of ranked records or as a consolidated list of categories.
2. Our current search experience allows users to do “Exact Match” searches.
3. Our current search experience allows users to specify a “Collection Priority” to filter results by country.

Crista Cowan has a great educational video which demonstrates this functionality in the current search experience:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c423yU5Ccs0

We also have a helpful article which does a side-by-side explanation of how to achieve the same types of results with the current search as in Old Search: http://ancestry.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5569/kw/old

Thank you,

The Ancestry.com Product Team

Using eBay to Find Genealogy Items

I use eBay a lot to look for ephemera with a connection to my ancestors. I've written a few blog posts about some of my great genealogy finds and interested readers have asked me for advice on using eBay successfully.

It can be  overwhelming when you search for something on eBay using the name of the city or village where your ancestor lived, and you get hundreds of hits. How do you narrow your search results? There are two ways to do this that I am aware of.

Let's use the search term Guelph That's the city where my parents were born and where my dad's ancestors settled in the 1860s. So I'm always on the hunt for some bit of ephemera that might involve an ancestor or provide me with some interesting background on the places they lived or worked.

394 Results!

If I type "Guelph" into the eBay search engine i get 394 results. That's a lot to look through! I can narrow my results though by choosing a category from the left side panel. I know I don't want any of the results in the "Sports" categories so I've elminated 174 of the hits already. "Collectibles" is probably more what I'm looking for so I've only got 132 results to look at. I could narrow that even further with the sub-categories within "Collectibles" if I wanted to. So that is one search method. Do a broad search and then narrow the results.

SEARCHING WITHIN CATEGORIES

You might also want to search within a specific category such as "Collectibles" rather than the entire eBay website.  I don't like to do this as I find I miss items if a seller doesn't put the item in the category I think it will be found.

SEARCHING WITHIN ITEM DESCRIPTIONS

If I search within titles (the default search) and am not finding what I want, I will often include my search to the item description. That is easily done by ticking the radio checkbox under the green Search button. This allows for a seller not using the word Guelph in her item title but using it in the description. For example I once bid on and won a beautiful 1930s watercolour of a river and bridge in Guelph. The word Guelph was not in the title but it was in the item description.

ADVANCED SEARCH

Advanced Search on eBay

There's another search method that you might prefer. eBay has an Advanced Search option. To use it, click on the word "advanced" to the right of the green search box in the generic search engine top of the page. You now have a long list of choices (options) for searching. I've shown a few here in this graphic.

Now you can choose from specific items, or buyers or from an eBay store. Those choices are fairly intuitive on how to use them so I won't go into detail here.




DROP-DOWN LIST OF CRITERIA CHOICES
Let's discuss the choices of criteria you can choose in the drop down list. Let's pretend you wanted to find yearbooks for Guelph. You might enter your keywords Guelph, yearbook

All words, any order: Search in titles containing all the words you've listed, in any order. The titles would have to contain both your keywords.

Any words, any order: Search in titles containing any of the words you've listed, in any order. This would result in hits for any title containing the word yearbook or Guelph So you would get a lot of hits that didn't apply such as "Toronto yearbook" or "Fair Dinkum Yearbook"

Exact words, exact order: As this choice says, you are searching in titles containing the exact keywords in the exact order you gave them. in this search, you would get results if the title contained "Guelph yearbook 1932" but not if the title was "Yearbook Guelph 1932"

Exact words, any order: This would give you results for a title "Yearbook Guelph 1932"

EXCLUDING KEYWORDS

You can also EXCLUDE words from your search. So I could use Guelph as a keyword but exclude the word sports or hockey or baseball. Perhaps I definitely don't want a Guelph souvenir spoon. I can exclude the word spoon.

BOOLEAN SEARCH OPERATORS

This is another option for searching. Using the generic search box at the top of eBay pages I can use several different search operators to refine my search.

Quotation Marks: These tell the search engines to search for that exact phrase. So I might search for "Guelph postcards" to find any titles with that exact wording. But I could also use "Guelph" postcards and this will find titles with the word Guelph and the word postcards but there  might be other words in between. So it would find titles using  Postcards of Speed River in Guelph

Asterisk (*): This is a wild card and allows you to search for an item such as Guelph Yearbook*  This will bring up the plural of yearbook as well as the singular. It would also bring up any title with the partial word book such as bookshelf or bookmark.

Commas and Brackets: I can use commas to separate keywords inside brackets, such as (Guelph, postcard). This brings up titles containing those keywords in any order

Minus sign: This acts as an exclusion operator and will bring up titles containing your keywords but not containing your exclusion word. So for example Guelph -hockey would eliminate any titles that are hockey related for Guelph items.

So there you have it - different ways to make your search for genealogy items on eBay much easier. And now I'm off to do my weekly search for any Guelph genealogy items. Oh one more thing - if like me you end up doing weekly searches, be sure to sort your search results by "Time: Newly listed". That way you won't keep clicking on through the older items that you have already looked at!

Mocavo - a NEW Genealogy Search Engine

Mocavo launched yesterday and it's definitely worth a look.

Quoting from the website

The world’s largest free genealogy search engine, Mocavo.com, provides genealogists access to the best free genealogy content on the web including billions of names, dates and places worldwide. Mocavo.com seeks to index and make searchable all of the world’s free genealogy information.

I took a peek today and it's pretty darn good. The search is fast. Results lead you directly to the website where the genealogical information is found. There's no sneaky trying to keep you in a frame of the original website. Websites that snag the visitor in a frame make it so you never really know where you are or where you found the information. Mocavo doesn't do that and kudos to the creator(s) for keeping it honest!

Mocavo is new so the indexing of genealogy data sites is not complete. There is a link where you can suggest a site you think should be included in the search results so that will speed things up once visitors start utilizing that ability.

I tried a couple of genealogy searches and was impressed with the speed. I'm going to be watching Mocavo closely over the next few weeks to see how it grows. You might want to check it out at http://mocavo.com

Live Roots Adds Access to FamilySearch Record Search Results

According to LiveRoots.com you can now view results from the Record Search pilot from within the Live Roots website.

Quoting from Live Roots website:

The FamilySearch Record Search pilot include millions of indexed records, and is expanding each month. When you perform a search in Live Roots, you will see a link to the FamilySearch Record Search feature in the "Available Partner Services" section.

You also have the ability to search a specific collection within the Record Search pilot from the corresponding resource page. Resources from the pilot are cataloged in Live Roots as soon as they are posted online.

I decided to give this new feature a try so went to the FamilySearch page on Live Roots. I was impressed with the speed of the search and the display of results but wanted to ask Illya D'Addezio, owner and creator of Live Roots, a few questions.

I wondered what the purpose was of adding this feature to the Live Roots website. According to Illya

The objective of Live Roots is to be a genealogical search "experience," not just a simple search engine. When you use a traditional search engine, the experience ends with a listing of results. With Live Roots, that's only the beginning. From the results, Live Roots shows you relationships between resources, and allows you to locate and/or preview related results from
other data repositories (e.g. Ancestry, Footnote, etc.).

What this amounts to is research efficiency, especially when your research involves a lot of repetitive searching, for example, a brick wall ancestor. Using Live Roots you can perform the same search across a dozen different repositories within a few minutes without ever having to reenter your search criteria or leave the Live Roots environment.

When I first used the new feature for FamilySearch, I mistakenly thought I was searching an index but Illya explained that it is not an index/image hosting
initiative, but a real-time, server to server access. This is the same as all of the other partner searches on Live Roots. A search on LiveRoots using the FamilySearch feature results in the LiveRoots server contacting FamilySearch server, obtaining the results and presenting them in LiveRoots in the format determined by Illya.

My concern that new records on Family Search would have a delay before being searching in Live Roots was put to rest when Illya explained this, because his method means that as soon as new records are available on the FamilySearch website, they are immediately available in the Live Roots experience.

My last question to Illya was "Why use the Live Roots FamilySearch feature rather than go directly to the Family Search website" He resonded that

"One of the main advantages to using Live Roots is the consistency it offers between the numerous data and book repositories, along with some of the
research management tools that simplify keeping track of when/where you found a useful resource. Bringing Family Search into the experience just adds to the efficiency, as now when you locate a record in Family Search, you can quickly see if
there are any related records in sites such as Ancestry or Footnote (and vice-versa)"

It's a great utility, and you really should try it out. Start your journey at the FamilySearch page on Live Roots.

New Wildcard Search on Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com announced a change to their search capabilities yesterday. I played with it for a few hours and was impressed! Before the change you had to use three characters and then either a * or a ?.

For example to search my maiden name McGinnis, you had to put MCG* to get variations of the ending of the name (innis, innes, ennis, ennes, uinness etc) But that didn't pick up MacG starts or McI starts or such variations as Magennis. So it was time-consuming and sometimes impossible, to think of all possible mis-indexed or mis-spelled variations.

Now you can put a wildcard first, such as *innis or ?cGinnis to catch all of those spellings and variations.

Try it. You'll like it! But you need to know the rules as posted by Ancestry.com:

Either the first or last character must be a non-wildcard character. For example, Han* and *son are okay, but not *anso*

Names must contain at least three non-wildcard characters. For example, Ha*n is okay, but not Ha*

You can use two wildcards in your name searches: the * (asterisk or star) and the ? (question mark).

* matches zero or more characters (example M*n*s picks up McGinnis, MacGinnis, McInnes, Magenis, and so on)

? matches one character only (example McGinn?s picks up McGinnes or McGinnis)

A really useful application of this new wildcard search capablity is the ability to replace the first letter of a surname! This allows for mistranscriptions or misindexing of such letters as "L" for "S" or "W" for "M" or "J" for "T". So if your surname of interest is Loomis, look for *oomis and that will pick up Soomis or other misrecorded names

Yesterday I was looking for a man named Lewis. But that name can be spelled Louis, and of course, mis-spelled in many ways. So I searched for l*is (remember, you must have 3 non wild-card letters) and bingo, there he was, as Louis.

I love this new search and am so glad Ancestry.com decided to set this up for researchers

O Where O Where Has My Ancestor Gone?

Does this sound familiar? You've hunted everywhere. You've searched online. You've checked Ancestry , FamilySearch, and as many free sites as you can find. But you can't find the marriage (or perhaps another event record) of that one elusive ancestor - your great grandfather's sister.

I was recently looking for a marriage registration online. I had the exact date (as per family records) of 24 June 1909. I had a pretty good idea of a fairly precise location (Perth County Ontario). I knew the names of both parties - Harry Ford and Sarah Icelia Foerch. I know Sarah's parents' names - Andrew and Susan.

Sounds pretty easy. Ancestry has the Ontario Marriage Registrations online for the years 1869-1924. I know from experience that a surname such as Foerch can be mispelled a variety of ways so I decide I'll look for the groom, along with the first name Sarah as the bride. I'll also use wildcards for Sarah's name to allow for the spelling Sara. So my hunt will be for groom Harry Ford and bride Sara*. I'll look in Perth County in 1909 in case the day and month are slightly off.

Nothing. Okay, remove Perth County - perhaps they married elsewhere. Nothing.

Okay, add a year or two on either side of that 1909 date. Now I'm searching for Harry Ford and Sara* marrying in Ontario 1908-1910. Still nothing!

I try searching for any child (no name) of a couple named Andrew and Susan in Perth County in 1909. Nothing found.

I try several other methods - first names only. Using ages (birth years plus or minus 2 years). Nothing.

Finally I decide to search leaving all fields blank except for the County (Perth) and the exact date June 24, 1909. I get a list of hits - not very many - and one looks slightly promising - the marriage of

William Mannington Ford to Julia Touch in Perth County

Julia Touch could be a mistranscription of Sarah Foerch using her middle name of Icelia..... Touch for Foerch is not a leap. And Sarah's father is listed as Andrew. Looks promising....

I have to chuckle at Sarah's mother's name in the index. It is "Lamber Merchant" which is obviously a mistranscription of the occupation of "Lumber Merchant", no doubt Sarah's father's occupation!

I load the image and bingo! Clearly visible is the marriage of William Harrington (not Mannington) Ford to Icelia (not Julia!) Foerch (not Touch). And there is the father Andrew Foerch, Lumber Merchant and his wife Susan.

So my Harry Ford went by the nickname Harry which of course is short for his middle name of Harrington! And Susan used her middle name of Icelia.

My search had a happy ending. Because I knew the date of the marriage and had a reasonable expectation of finding it in Perth County, I was able to find the marriage registration I wanted.

But lesson learned - expand that search! Drop the names. Use wildcards. Use other fields and leave the names blank. Search just under one field and be creative, think outside the box - and don't give up!

Remember, human error can easily creep in to make your search more difficult. So don't assume you will find every indexed database online is correctly done.

Genealogy Today Launches Live Roots Meta Search Website

Genealogy Today (www.genealogytoday.com) announced the release of a new website designed to help researchers locate genealogical data -- both online and offline, and either digitized or in-print. Live Roots bridges the gaps between independent websites, large commercial repositories and printed materials yet to be digitized and published on the World Wide Web.

"I've always tried to stay informed about new resources; but with so many outlets, there hasn't been a single place to search across different catalogs," commented Illya D'Addezio, owner of Genealogy Today. "Through Live Roots I'm partnering with major genealogy companies and many medium and smaller publishers to combine their respective catalogs into one repository."

Live Roots extends beyond the typical bounds of a traditional search engine or link directory by facilitating access to offline records and publications through partnerships with amateur and professional researchers who either own copies or are geographically close to the libraries and archives that do. In a few quick steps, visitors will be able to hire a researcher to obtain digital copies (scanned or hi-res photo) of pages referencing a specific name (or surname).

New One-Step Search Engine from Steve Morse

Steve Morse has created another one-step search form for family researchers on his website.

Steve's latest One Step is for the Montreal City Directories . . . "Annuaires Lovell de Montreal et sa banlieue" a free online database located at the National Library of Quebec "Bibliothèque National du Québec," containing digitized copies of Montreal city directories from 1842 to 1977, and criss-cross directories from 1974-1992.

Go to the "Births, Deaths, and other Vital Records" section of Steve's website and scroll down to the fourth entry from the end.

The advantage of the One-Step is that you can search for your ancestors name,
year by year, without having to do all the navigating and clicking that you have to do when doing such a search from the website directly.