Randy Seaver on his Genea-musings blog wrote the post back on 2 May 2018 “Dear Randy: How Do You Search For Records on Ancestry.com?”
Since my subscription to Ancestry had just expired, I decided to wait until I had renewed my subscription before doing a post about how I go about searching on Ancestry.
Hints
To begin with, I look at the hints, since that brings up the most common records.
I went into my Ancestry tree, and chose one of my ancestors that had a hint – my great grandfather Joseph Whimpey.
The first hint was for Joseph’s marriage entry. I already have the marriage certificate from the Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages, but since I am using this tree just for Ancestry records, I attached this to Joseph’s profile.
Suggested Records
As I am working through each hint (as well as when I’m using the different types of searches), I will also check the Suggested Records, to check if that picks up additional records that aren’t in the hints. This can be useful for people with a common name, as it saves time trying to find records for the right person.
Search within person’s profile
Once I have gone through all the hints, and suggested records, while I’m in the person’s profile, I’ll click the Search button
This uses the information you already have for the person to search for additional records
Search from the Home or Search pages
Searching from a person’s profile may bring up too many irrelevant results. For example, Joseph’s wife was Sarah Jane Sharp. When searching from her profile, I came up with a lot of results for the name Sarah Jane Sharp, which wouldn’t be for this Sarah, because she married in 1872.
In these cases, I’d go back to the Home or Search page to clear all the criteria, so I can enter just the criteria I want, so that I don’t get as many irrelevant results.
Search from the Card Catalogue
I use the card catalogue to narrow my search to a particular collection. This is useful when there are:
Too many (irrelevant) results
Records that should come up in a search, haven’t come up
To find browse only collections
For example, when searching for George Willis born 1828 in Wiltshire, England, the following were the first 3 results:
None of these is the right entry, so to find the baptism for my George Willis, it is easier to go straight to the Card Catalogue, and enter Wiltshire, England in the Title field
Then I choose the relevant collection, and search for George there.
My George is now the first result
