| A review of many things taught in the past three semesters is
found below.
Use Wildcards
- Type in the first few characters of a name, followed by an asterisk
(*)
- Expect the name to be spelled creatively---be proactive by liberally
using wildcards
- Use the hook character (?) for wildcarding any letter in a word
(e.g., Eli?sabeth)
Try Alternate Spellings
- Don't accept "zero results"---try lots of creative
spellings
- Identify alternate spellings from search results on <FamilySearch.org>
- Collect spelling variants for your ancestor's name by carefully
combing indexes
- Search using other details beyond the name
- If a search template lets you enter many fields, leave out the
first name or last name
- Search on everyone in the town and review the research results
for name that's close
- Go through the record page by page if the index does not yield
the ancestor you seek
Search for Other Family Members
- The search for an ancestor is the search for a family
- Try a parent search, only entering the names of the father and
mother
- Involve all of the ancestor's siblings
- If the family name is rare, don't even filter on given names
Examine Online Images of Original Documents
- Become familiar with the original records
- Learn the handwriting so you can understand name misspellings
better
- Discover your ancestor's presence in the records
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