SEARCHING: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE WITH ANCESTRY
Ancestry provides family history researchers with online access to billions of genealogical records. Of these, we understand that the digitised documents of most interest to you are those that contain the valuable clues about your family. This guide will help you search even more thoroughly Search All Records
1. From the menu, choose: Search > Search All Records. Let’s take a look at the search fields available to you.
2. In addition to first, middle and last name, the place your ancestor may have lived and their birth year, there is the option to ‘Match all terms exactly’. It can be tempting to tick this option if you feel very certain of the facts. However, do remember that the details may have been recorded differently, for any number of reasons.
You may also fine-tune your search by adding details for an event (such as a birth, marriage, death and more) or a member of the family (for instance, father, mother, sibling, spouse, child).
Scrolling down Search All Records you’ll note that you may refine your search by keyword, gender, race/nationality.
You may also check/uncheck the boxes to include search results from historical records, family trees, stories & publications, and photos & maps.
These options give you considerable control over your search results. But let’s drill a little deeper.
All Collections
3. The default setting is for the search to be conducted across all the Ancestry collections. You may, if you wish, specify your country of interest, however, for more precise search results.
Collection search fields
4. If you know the record collection you wish to search within (for instance, the 1841 Census for England), go directly to that collection. You can find specific collections via the Card Catalogue (see figure 1).
5. You will note that search fields specific to that collection make your search experience much more detailed and controllable.
Exact... or not?
6. We mentioned the option to tick the ‘Match all search terms’ in the Search All Records interface. When searching within a collection you have the option to refine this even further. For instance, perhaps you wish to search on an exact first name, but to opt for Sounds like, Similar or Soundex for the surname field. Select ‘About these settings’ to learn more about the search variables.
The search tools have been designed to help you trace your ancestors and we hope they help you find the clues you seek.