Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
One always has to be thinking and paying attention when searching. It also helps to never assume anything. Searches on FamilySearch with the “exact box” unchecked give the searcher a broad set of results, more results than if an exact search was conducted. The results from an “unexact” search are based upon variants of the name. […]
Searching the Cook County, Illinois, death index on FamilySearch reminded me that when searching with the “exact box” unchecked vowels sometimes matter. The last names of Verikios and Verikos only differ by one letter: a vowel. It’s not even the initial letter where a different letter is more significant. In most sites that have unexact searches, […]
The 1925 Iowa State Census contains the names of parents for every person enumerated. It is probably the best state census ever taken in the United States. The FamilySearch website recently updated or added an index to this unique state census, making it available for users at no charge. The image shown below is part of the […]
It would seem that an extra “l” would not matter. But apparently it does. I often search at FamilySearch with the exact box left unchecked, especially when a first or last name has a variety of variant spellings. My search for “mountvil harness” (as shown in the image), brought about 16,400 results. While I had no […]
