Searching for your ancestors is a fascinating, yet also time consuming task. Sometimes your results page seems to yield nothing, and at other times you can be overwhelmed with potential leads.
I am going to share some tips on how I approach searching, using some examples from my own family history. As great as sites like FamilySearch, Ancestry and FindMyPast are, they don’t cover everything, and sometimes you need to venture out into the World Wide Web to extend your searching. I usually use Google as my search engine.
First, just go to google and type in your ancestor’s name to get an idea of what’s out there. When I first started, I was focusing on my great great great grandfather James Barak Ellis. At the time the US President was Barack Obama. My search results were absolutely swamped with links relating to him. I tackled this in two ways. I tried searching for “James Barak Ellis” in quotes. This tells google I only want results that include all three words together. This cut down the results page to a handful of links for me to explore.
The second thing I tried was to search for James Barak Ellis without the quotes but I added in -Obama. This tells google to leave out the links that contain Obama. I get a wider group of potential leads this way, and they are not swamped by Barack Obama.
I always try searching for the person’s name on its own first. After that I try adding in a street name, or town or parish. I also try adding in their occupation. I also search for street and occupation without the person’s name.
Another handy tip when reviewing the search engine results page (SERP for short) on a computer is to use the mouse and right click the link you want to look at, and select “open in a new tab”. This is particularly useful if you want to have a good read of the website and explore it further, but still also want to keep scrolling down the SERP page. It’s a bit harder on an iPad as there is no right click, so you would have to open the page, copy the link, then open a new tab and paste the link, then go back to the previous tab to return to the search page.
Google Books can yield some fascinating avenues of exploration when looking for ancestors. Because I am in Australia, google always takes me to the Australian version, but the search won’t be limited to Australian Books. You can also click on the link to Books on a normal google page.
Again, I use a combination of search phrases to try and find relevant links. A quick glance through the excerpts displayed with each link will tell you whether it’s worth looking closer.
For example, I had discovered that James Barak Ellis’ sister Sophia had been married to a pewterer named Thomas Buckingham who had premises in Swallow Street in London. A search through Google Books for “Thomas Buckingham Swallow Street” yielded a link to the following book.
I searched with and without the word “street”. I searched with his name plus the word “pewter”.
I usually scroll down through at least the first 50 results. A quick glance will tell me that the link relates to say, Buckingham Palace, or the Earl of Buckingham, so not worth clicking on. On the other hand, a link might look like this one below, and that would definitely be worth clicking on and reading further.
When I get a result like the one above, I am delighted, because it can open up a new avenue of search. I can then decide to come back later to the Old Bailey Online and search for other significant names in my family tree.
I always click on Images and have a quick look through what is on offer from Google. To be honest, this hardly ever yields anything worth while, but every now and then there will be something that might spark an idea, or add some context. It is enough to keep me returning to the images collection “just in case”! The image below came from a search using the words “swallow street london”.
I find that I am always tempted to dive down an internet rabbit hole when new information like this crops up. I am always torn. Do I continue on the path I set out on? Or do I let myself be drawn into the new possibilities that have just opened up before me? Which ever way I decide to go, I try to make sure I return to this point and follow the other path. That rabbit hole is always worth a bit of time, its just a question of whether to do it now or later.