More Special Characters to Improve Your Search Results

In follow-up to our previous post, "Using Special Characters To Bubble Up Those Leads," here are a few more special characters that can be used to improve your genealogical search results.  If you are new to genealogy, these characters can be critical to finding that elusive piece of information about your ancestor.

The Tilde (~) Operator

This special character can assist you be searching for the word you list just after the tilde as well as any synonyms for that word.  The tilde can be found on your keyboard just before the number 1 but you have to use shift and that key together to get the tilde to display.  

Maybe you have an ancestor who owned and operated a restaurant in the 1920s.  You might want to try searching with the tilde and the word food.

     Example 1:  "George Terrian" 1910..1930 ~food

If you look closely at your search results, you'll notice search terms appear in bold so you can see which synonyms are being found.  In the above example, search results included the words food, meal and restaurant.

The Minus (-) Operator

Sometimes ours searches provide accurate but undesirable results.  Maybe your ancestor has the same surname as a popular actor or musician.  Or, in my case, a line that produces results about an infamous crime family.  While this would be awesome if my ancestors were actually part of the mafia, they were not so I want to exclude any mafia related items from my search results.

     Example 2:  "Giuseppe Gambino" 1890..1970 -mafia -crime

By using the minus operator, we are able to exclude any mafia or crime related items.  Use caution with the minus sign though.  In this example, I may also be unintentionally excluding other non-mafia related crime activity for my ancestor, if any exists. 

The "site:" Operator

Sometimes in our quest for ancestral information, we want to search a specific website for information.  While most sites have their own search box, some do not or maybe their search display isn't easy to review.  If you want to use your favorite search engine to do the search instead, you can just add the "site:" operator to your query.

     Example 3:  "Thomas*Halligan" 1900..1970 site:fold3.com

This will provide findings only for the site you noted in your query.  Not only can this help you speed up your search on a particular website, but it can also help you determine how much potential information about your ancestor exists on the site.  If it is a paid subscription site, this could help you decide which services are valuable investments and which are not.

Summary

Special characters can really improve your search results and help you to find previously elusive information about your ancestors.  Experiment with mixing and matching these operators to achieve your desired level of results.  And, if you're having trouble remembering all the various characters, see if your search engine has a link for advanced search (i.e., www.google.com/advanced_search).  This will provide you with a fill-in form for all the various options without having to use the special characters.

Please feel free to post in the comments below if this helped you find something new and exciting.

Using Special Characters To Bubble Up Those Leads

The Basic Genealogy Search

Most of us start out using search engines for genealogy by simply typing in the name of our ancestor and maybe the location where they lived.

     Example 1:  Joseph Gambino Italy

While there is nothing wrong with this type of search, we may be missing out on a lot of great information by only searching this one way. There are a variety of ways to search and there are special characters or operators that can help us achieve our research goals.  To obtain the best possible results from our search, we can use special characters to refine our query and ensure only the most promising leads bubble up to the top.

Using Quotes  

When we search using the basic method above, the search engine will look for anything containing the word Joseph and the word Gambino in the same page.  Since we are looking for a name, we would rather have results for the phrase Joseph Gambino together.  To achieve that, quotation marks are used.

     Example 2:  "Joseph Gambino" Italy

By placing quotes around the name of our ancestor, we are telling the search engine that we only want our results to include pages that reference the exact phrase as we have typed it in between those quotes.

The OR Operator

If you read my previous post, you'll know that spelling can be an issue when doing genealogy.  Names were often misspelled.  Names can change or be Americanized.  To search on different variations of a name, we use the OR operator.

    Example 3:  "Joseph Gambino" OR "Joe Gambino" OR "Giuseppe Gambino" Italy

By including each variation in our search, we will now receive results that list any of the above names (as they appear inside the quotes).  Using the OR operator can be the difference between finding one document and finding many documents.

The Asterisk (*) Operator

Not sure if your Ancestor used a middle name or initial.  We definitely don't want to miss out on a document just because we didn't include that information in our search.  An asterisk (SHIFT + 8 on your keyboard) can act as a wildcard so the search engine will know that we want to search for the first word adjacent to or separated by one word from the second word in our quotes.  

     Example 4:  "Joseph * Gambino" OR "Joe * Gambino" OR "Giuseppe * Gambino"

                            OR "Gambino * Joseph" OR "Gambino * Joe" OR "Gambino * Giuseppe"                                 Italy

By including the asterisk, we can account for use of  a middle name or initial even if we don't know what that name or initial may be.  We have also used it here to account for documents that may reference our Ancestor by last name first.

The Range (..) Operator

If your Ancestor has a common name, you may want to narrow your search results even further by limiting your search to a specific date range.  To do this, you can enter the birth and death years separated by two dots.  If you don't have the birth and death years, you can use approximate years.

     Example 5:  "Joseph * Gambino" OR "Joe * Gambino" OR "Giuseppe * Gambino"

                            OR "Gambino * Joseph" OR "Gambino * Joe" OR "Gambino * Giuseppe"

                            Italy 1894..1973  

By using some or all of these special characters or operators, you should be able to better narrow your results so you can reach the records you desire.  I encourage you to try this with your own Ancestor.  Start with the basic search and see what results you get, then add some of the other options above and see if that improves your results.  You may be surprised what bubbles up to the top.  We'd love to see if this helped your research so feel free to share your comments below.

Stay tuned for our next post on even more special characters or operators used for improving your search results.

Poor Spellers Welcome

Spell-check will fix that by Eli Christman is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).  

No alterations to image - www.flickr.com

I don't know about you, but in school I was always the first one out of the spelling bee.  While other kids in my class thought spelling bees were great and thought of them as a fun game, I would dread them and break out in a sweat the moment I heard our teacher say we were going to have one.

Although my spelling has improved a bit over the years, it is still not one of my better skills.  Luckily for me, being a poor speller can actually work to my advantage when it comes to genealogy.  Why is that you ask?  Well, because like me, and maybe you too, there are a whole lot of other bad spellers in the world.  Yes, that's right, we are not alone.

So, as we search for our ancestors by name, remember to search what you think is the correct spelling, but also search for common misspellings of that same name.  The worse your spelling, the easier it will be for you to come up with these alternatives.  Some websites automatically build this in with "exact" or "sounds like" search options, but for others you will need to remember to enter all variations (for example, when you are using a search engine like Google).

Another thing to consider:  don't immediately disregard someone as not being your ancestor just because there is an extra 'e' in the name or the 'h' is missing.  Right now, I'm researching an ancestor with the surname (as I know it) of Terrian.  So far, I have found my ancestor in documents listed as Terrian, Terrien, Therrien, Terren, and even on their grave stone as Teerian.  I'm working with a possible cousin in Canada to track down documents there which may have listed one of my ancestors in this line as L'Italien.  So, as you can see, spelling is not always a good indicator of whether the person listed in the document is indeed your ancestor or not.  This can only be determined by analysing all the claims noted in the document and comparing them to what you know about your ancestor.

So, keep on researching and keep on spellin bd.  ;)

CASE STUDY: Why I Can't Prove When I Was Born

So, as many of you know, when I first started my tree I made a lot of newbie mistakes.  That was one of the driving forces for me to create this blog.  Now that I've watched a few hundred videos and I am starting to better understand the methodology for doing genealogy, re-doing my tree seemed to be a smart idea.  I'm not scrapping everything and starting over, but I am going back to the beginning and re-reviewing the work I've done and making corrections where needed.  Although I'm fairly confident in the actual data I have in my tree, I'm also very confident that my citations are crap or non-existent and there is absolutely no proof of anything using the GPS (Genealogical Proof Standard).

movie-clapper-icon_500x500 by Ilya Sedykh is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).  
No alterations to image - www.flickr.com

Take Two  

Starting with myself, it seemed reasonable to try to prove when I was born first.  Since I had technically already done this research and already had supporting documents, I skipped over a few of the normal steps on my research process list.  If you read my previous post, I jumped down to step 6: Make Note of Your Findings as this seemed to be where things went wrong the first time around.

Documenting Sources

Looking to see what documents were in my database, it turned out that I had a birth certificate, a baptismal certificate, marriage license, and a notation on the US Public Records Index.  I used a tool called Evidentia to record source records and citations for each of these using templates available in that application.

Analysis

Thinking this would be a cut and dried case, the first document I grabbed was my birth certificate.  I made a list of all the information listed in the document - namely my name, the names of my parents, the date on which I was born and the city and state where I was born.  Seems pretty clear and the information answers my question directly.  Done!  Right?  Well, not so fast.  I hit a problem - what I thought was my birth certificate was only a certificate of birth registration.  The only signature on this registration is the local registrar's who likely did not witness my birth.  There is no notation on the document to show who the informant was for my birth.  I checked my other documents and I don't have my actual birth certificate so I'm going to have to request a copy.  So, based on this registration alone, I cannot prove when I was born.

Since it will take some time to get the birth certificate copy, I looked to the other documents I had gathered.  Before I moved on though, I took another look at the birth registration and it was filed only 11 days after the date of birth noted and it is a certified copy so given that it is a government document, it does provide some evidence of my date of birth.  The next document I had was my baptismal certificate that noted my date of birth.  However, the witnesses who signed my baptismal certificate did not necessarily witness my birth also, so that is not proof.  The baptism did occur only 22 days after the noted date of birth though which is consistent with practices for baptisms in the church so it's reasonable that I was baptized as a baby.  Again, supportive but not conclusive evidence.

My marriage certificate was based on a form I filled out and I used that birth registration as proof of my birth for that purpose and it was accepted since it's a certified copy.  Since the birth information is fruit from the same tree, the marriage certificate can't really help me at all.

The last item is just an index and there is no way to tell from what original document the information in it is derived, so that doesn't really help at all either.

Resolving Conflicts

Tug of War by Robert Clemens is licensed under a 

Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0).  

No alterations to image - www.flickr.com

Luckily for me, while the documents I have are definitive proof of my date of birth, they all have one thing in common.  They report the same date.  So, even the items that are not very helpful from a proof perspective, like the Public Record Index, still at least support and give credence to the other documents as it reports the same date.

Conclusion

So, for now, my conclusion is that I can not definitively prove when I was born.  I did note the steps I went through above and stated that I believe the date of birth noted on the registration is correct.  I noted my next steps are to request and obtain a copy of my birth certificate from the county vital records office.  I can not complete my conclusion until that document is reviewed in conjunction with my other documents.  If it were to say that I was born a month earlier, then there would be a major conflict to deal with and it would be a more powerful indicator of the date if it is signed by my parents and/or a hospital physician.  So, for now I can't prove when I was born.

I hope walking through this situation will help other newbies like me begin to understand the importance of using the GPS.  While it may seem a little silly, especially using myself as an example, the process should be the same for my own records as it is for any of my ancestors.  If I were to overlook something like this while researching an ancestor, I could end up with the wrong person in my tree and spend a lot of time and money researching someone else's family.  And worse, with the ease of sharing information online, someone else could potentially merge my bad data with theirs and that would cause them to go down the wrong path also.  My hope is that writing up these type of cases will help prevent others from ending up in this situation.