This is part 5 of a 5-part series on improving your search skills.
Once, long ago, I was sitting on the front porch with my husband, lamenting that I had been unable to prove my research subject’s mother and brother. I had a gut instinct that I had her in the right place, but didn’t have the records to prove it. I had recounted to him many times over all the places I had searched. I was baffled as to why I couldn’t find this woman. She and her brother were born in the 1920s in North Carolina, and birth certificates and other vital records were standard at the time.
Why didn’t she make more records?
Why Ruby Carolyn? Why didn't you make more records??
My husband may have been tired of hearing me hash through it over and over again. He looked at me, and in his sweet and gentle manner, asked me:
“Why don’t you just Google that m----f---- ?”
And so I did. Just on the browser of my phone, I searched for her about 10 different ways. I searched with her maiden name, without, with a birth year, a death year, etc. Finally, I searched with her name in quotation marks alongside her brother’s first name. And there she was! She and her brother were listed as beneficiaries in an index of wills from the county she was born in. The existence of the index strengthened my assumption, and hopefully I could now get a copy of the actual will and learn more.
Sometimes, when all else fails, you can turn to your old friend, Mr. Google. Googling the name of your research subject could help you find an obituary, a mention in a family history book, a family history website related to your person, a document that has been digitized but isn’t part of a large repository, etc. Google likely won't be your first line of defense, but don’t rule it out.
Target Your Approach
The very first step of a broad search is to think about the kinds of results you're searching for and what your strategy might be to get there.
Let's say you're looking for the parents and/or maiden name of Marley Simpson, spouse of Jimmy Simpson. Marley is old enough that one or both parents are likely deceased. If you could find an obituary for the parent listing the child and their spouse, you could identify one and possibly both parents.
Since obituaries tend to list children's names with spouse's names in parentheses, your best google search would be:
"Marley (Jimmy) Simpson"
Make use of Google Search Operators
If my subject is "Raymond John Blackwelder," born in Wake County, NC in 1875, died 1947 in the same location, I would likely google him the following ways:
"Raymond John Blackwelder" 1875
"Raymond J. Blackwelder" 1947
"Raymond Blackwelder" "Wake County"
"R.J. Blackwelder" "North Carolina"
The quotation marks limit my results to the exact and full name. I would likely go through every permutation of the individual's name with and without birth and death years and locations to see what results I could find. If I wasn't certain on part of the search, such as Wake County being the birth location, I might make use of the "OR" operator by searching "Wake County" OR "North Carolina." When combined with other search components, this "OR" statement would need to be grouped, so that whole search would look like this:
"Raymond Blackwelder" ("Wake County" OR "North Carolina")
If I'm looking for an older ancestor, one who's more likely to have been researched previously and/or may be a historical figure, I'm going to tell Google to show me results where the birth year is mentioned shortly after the name is stated by using the AROUND() search operator.
For example, if I'm looking for an entry on Wikitree or Geni for William Bradford, a Mayflower passenger and governor of the Plymouth Colony who was born about 1589, I'm going to search for him as follows:
"William Bradford" AROUND(10) 1589
The above search entry will give me results where "William Bradford" and "1589" are mentioned in a page within 10 words of one another.
If you keep getting results for the wrong individual, you can try searching with the minus sign (-) to exclude some results. For example, if you didn't mean that William Bradford, search:
"William Bradford" -Mayflower
Names & Nicknames
Try searching names in various ways. If you can’t find women who were married, don’t forget to search for them as "Mrs. [Husband's Name]" (here’s a good spot to roll your eyes, for sure). And remember that some names have nicknames you might not expect.
See below a list of common nicknames with which you may or may not be familiar.
Ann: Nan, Nancy
Butch: Nickname for a Junior
Catherine: Cathy, Cat, Kate, Katy, Kit, Kitty
Charles: Chuck
Dorothy: Dot, Dottie
Edward: Ted, Ned, Eddie
Elizabeth: Beth, Bess, Betsy, Liz, Lisa, Liza, Eliza, Buffy
Helen: Nell, Nellie
Henry: Harry, Hank
James: Jim
John: Jack
Margaret: Maggie, Meg, Peg, Peggy, Daisy (the French word for daisy is “marguerite”)
Martha: Patsy
Mary: Molly, Polly
Patricia: Patty, Tricia, Trish
Richard: Rick, Dick
Sarah: Sally
William: Will, Willy, Bill, Billy
Birth Order Names/Nicknames
First-born: Primo
Second-born: Segundo
Third-born: Trace, Tripp, or Trey (also nicknames for a III, son of a Junior)
Fourth-born: Kade or Cade
Fifth-born: Quinn
Sixth-born: Cecil
Seventh-born: Doc or Doctor (Seventh sons were believed to have special or supernatural powers and sometimes named Doc or Doctor in the 1800s & 1900s.)
Eighth-born: Otto
Further Resources:
Comments