Ancestry.com’s main toolbar (accessible at the top of most pages) allows users to navigate the site’s major features.
Ancestry.com has made searching for ancestors super simple. With fill-in-the-blank forms for major categories of records like immigration, military, and birth, you can easily go directly to the category of records you need and begin your search. But there’s also a second way of finding your ancestors: the Card Catalog. It’s less used than the standard search function, but it can be far more effective in many instances.
In this chapter, I’ll show you how to get the most out of both approaches.
Ancestry.com’s primary (and most famous) research tool is its Search form. Ancestry.com Search is your gateway to the website’s more than 17 billion records, but you may feel lost in the face of all those records. This section will help you feel confident using the Search form to drill down into Ancestry.com’s massive stockpile of records and discover research gems.
When you click Search, located at the top of all Ancestry.com pages (image A), you can select which category of records collections you’d like to investigate. For now, click All Collections; we’ll discuss the other categories in detail in later chapters. On the All Collections page <search.ancestry.com>, a search form pops up (image B), inviting you to enter the name of the person you’re seeking along with any relevant information such as date of birth or place lived.
Using this general, All Collections search box tells the system to search everything on the site: all records collections, user-submitted family trees and ancestor profiles, and collections of historical maps and photos. By searching so many resources at once, you’re casting a wide net and will probably find relevant family records. However, you may also get thousands upon thousands of search results and bury the information you need beneath tons of irrelevant records.
If you choose to use this form, you have a few ways of narrowing search parameters. At the bottom of the form, you’ll see a pull-down arrow under Collection Focus. Use this to select the country of research interest; for example, selecting Scotland from the pull-down forces Ancestry.com to return only results that come from Scotland.
Ancestry.com’s main toolbar (accessible at the top of most pages) allows users to navigate the site’s major features.
You can search Ancestry.com’s entire trove of records using the All Collections form—though the sheer number of results can sometimes be overwhelming and hide the most relevant record matches.
In addition, checkboxes for four types of collections will appear:
By default, all four are checked. However, you can narrow by collection, drastically reducing the number of results. If you only want to search through Photos & Maps, for example, deselect the other three categories.
There are only a few instances in which I suggest using the general search form.
The first is when you’re just getting started in family tree research. If you only know a little about your family or have limited knowledge about genealogy in general, start with this form. Your search will likely result in thousands or even tens of thousands of results. While this sounds like a godsend for your research, some of your results will only appear because the search engine is casting the widest possible net over all of its billions of records. To put it another way: The search engine will present people not even remotely related to you. A search like this will take some patience on your part because of the number of irrelevant results, but it’s a good starting place.
The second instance in which the general search function excels is if you’ve been searching, without success, for an ancestor who stubbornly remains hidden. Even with my extensive background in genealogy research, I’ll often strike out and still not find what I’m looking for after trying every possible combination of advanced search techniques. When I hit this kind of brick wall, I’ll turn to the general search form. Hopefully, some other researcher will have posted a tiny kernel of information that will open up another search path, and the general search’s wide net might be the perfect tool to pull that tiny kernel into the light.
The third time this form is useful is when you’re just getting started on a previously unresearched family line. You may know the names and approximate dates for a few generations back, but your general knowledge of the particular family might be slim. Using the general form allows you to get a sense of what research has already been done and what you might expect to find.
Let me show you what I mean. I know that I have a peripheral ancestor (a many-times-removed cousin) named Galen Cave, who was born in Virginia in 1800 and died in Lone Jack, Missouri. I have a few fragments of information about him, but not enough to feel confident going back much further in his family tree. Using the general search form, I entered only his name and date and place of birth. I also chose to leave all of the categories at the bottom of the form selected (image C). When I clicked the Search button, I ended up with 113,571 results. Obviously, there’s insufficient room in an image to show you all of the results, but image D will suffice.
Try this search along with me, because I think it will give you the opportunity to see if your next steps match my own search decisions. Your results may be much better than mine! Go ahead and do that initial search, then return once you’ve finished.
On the All Collections search form, you can select which types of results you’d like to see. Leaving all four (Historical Records, Family Trees, Stories & Publications, and Photos & Maps) casts the widest net.
Ancestry.com gives you many options to use to filter and view your results. The All Collections search will return many results, often in the hundreds of thousands.
Among my first results, four things stood out:
Ancestry.com has divided its records collections into large “buckets” that we’ll be calling categories. For instance, some collections (such as passenger lists and naturalization papers) go in the Immigration category while others (such as wills) go in the Probate category. Let’s review what large categories you’re able to search in addition to the site’s general Search form. If you click Search on the main menu at the top of page, you’ll get a drop-down box of the many ways you can search (image E):
Ancestry.com has search forms for each of its major records categories.
We’ll discuss each major category of records and how to use them in later chapters, but for now just know that these categories allow you to search large amounts of similarly focused records at once.
Before you begin your search, Ancestry.com will recommend collections based on what record type you’re researching.
Once you click on a search result, Ancestry.com provides a list of suggested records that can open new paths of research.
With the few exceptions mentioned earlier, most of my Ancestry.com searches begin at the Card Catalog <search.ancestry.com/search/cardcatalog>. I think the Card Catalog is Ancestry.com’s most powerful search tool, yet it may not be something you’ve ever used. To access it, click the Search tab from the top menu bar, then find Card Catalog as one of the last options.
First, you need to know that the Card Catalog isn’t for locating your ancestors. It’s for locating collections that might contain your ancestors—and not just any old collections, but those that are most relevant to your search and have the highest odds for a successful search.
Why am I such a proponent of using the Card Catalog? Because it narrows your search down to the most relevant collections for a specific search. When you use the general search form (or even one of the more specific record forms), Ancestry.com sends its robot search team out through its tens of thousands of collections and billions of records. It then returns anything it thinks has even a slight possibility of matching your search request. Most of the time, you’ll benefit from a more targeted search, and that begins with the Card Catalog.
When you use the Card Catalog, you can set up search parameters that force the Ancestry.com system to pull only the collections that are relevant to your search. This is done by setting up filters. When you first click over to the Card Catalog, you can search through every single record and collection you want sorted by popularity (image F), collection title, record count, date updated, or date added.
In addition, running along the left side of the page are filters for:
This may not seem like a lot of filters at first. However, upon clicking on a filter, you’ll receive even more options. For example, if you choose USA as a location filter, you’ll next have the option of choosing an individual state.
Similarly, if you choose a category such as Stories, Memories & Histories (which will be discussed in more depth in chapter 7), you can filter even further by the subcategories that will appear:
See the Quick Guide: Ancestry.com Categories and Subcategories worksheet at the end of this chapter for more on the Card Catalog’s categorization system.
Note: The number next to each category and subcategory doesn’t represent the number of records in the category. Rather, it represents the number of collections in the category. That means if you’re interested in oral histories and interviews, you’ll find roughly sixteen collections relevant to that category.
If your filtered search returns too many collections to reasonably review, try using the additional filters Title and Keywords.
The Ancestry.com Card Catalog organizes the site’s various collections by topic. You can also view collections by popularity, record count, and more.
You can filter your Card Catalog search results to include only collections that contain particular kinds of records, such as census and voter lists.
For example, filtering for Stories, Memories & Histories, USA produces more than nineteen thousand results. But what if my search goal is information relating only to the state of Kansas? By placing the word Kansas in the Title box, Ancestry.com will selectively return collections that have the word Kansas in the title of the collection (image H). The search results have gone from nineteen thousand to around 150.
But what if I want to expand my search to collections that include the word Kansas within the collection data, but are not specifically from Kansas? By putting Kansas as a keyword, the search results soar back to more than seven thousand. That’s because Ancestry.com’s search engine is pulling in all collections that include Kansas information but were not necessarily created in Kansas. This includes collections like the “Hinshaw Index to Quaker Records” and the “Daughters of the American Revolutionary Lineage Books.”
Don’t forget to check the date filters, as well. As you can see, you can filter by Century or by Decade. This makes your search so much more accurate when you’re searching for people with the same name but who lived generations apart, or if you’re searching for records specific to an event. For example, the American Civil War took place from 1861 to 1865; select the 1860s as a filter if you’re looking for Civil War-era collections.
Say you want to find the most relevant collections for a Civil War ancestor from Ohio. Here’s how you might set up filters:
By filtering, you’ve ended up with seventeen possible collections instead of 1,283. Once you’ve filtered down to the seventeen collections, click on each one to search it individually.
Using titles and keywords in a Card Catalog collections search can help you narrow your search to a more manageable number of results.
Ancestry.com’s records categories are big buckets—so how can you find relevant collections within the Card Catalog? The first way is using filters to narrow down the collections to a manageable number. The second way is to use the Title and Keyword(s) search boxes either with filters or on their own.
Fair warning: You may miss out on a collection if you use the Title search box and don’t experiment with the words you choose to use, as different combinations of filters, titles, and keywords will produce different results. For example, if you’re looking for Methodist church records in Ohio, typing Ohio church will get you nineteen collections, while Ohio Methodist will return only one.
But here’s the really interesting part: If you type church in the Title box, then use the filters for USA > Ohio (image I), you’ll get sixty-six collections! And, if you do the same search but add Methodist as a keyword (image J), you’ll get four results. The name of the game here is to experiment with different combinations of filters, keywords, and titles.
Are you wondering why the Wiseman family collection showed up in this Methodist church search? It’s because Methodist Episcopal Church of New Salem is the subject of the collection. You can always learn more about any collection by placing your mouse over its name; a new box will pop up giving you more information (image K).
If you play around with titles, keywords, and filters long enough, you’ll find that various combinations of those three can return unexpected (and sometimes wonderful) results. Like a detective pouring over clues, I keep trying new combinations to deduce (or in this case, locate) the best result.
You can use titles or keywords in combination with filters to find relevant collections.
As we did with the Search form, we should also address when to use the Card Catalog instead of other search forms like the Census & Voter Lists or Birth, Marriage & Death categories.
If you know that you’re searching for something specific—like your grandparents in the 1940 census—you should probably go directly to the Census & Voter Lists search form, then drill down for the 1940 census using filters.
But, if you heard family stories about Great-grandpa being in the Army, where would you begin your search? Select Military from the Search drop-down menu to access the Military search page. But when you do this, you’re searching through all 1,238 collections relating to military records. Wouldn’t it be easier to go to the Card Catalog and narrow down to relevant collections?
I believe that when you have a clearly defined goal with clearly defined collections (like the 1940 federal census or the Social Security Death Index), then go directly to those search forms. In instances in which you have a specific search goal (such as “Find a mention of my grandfather in church records” or “Was my ancestor wounded in the Civil War?”) without a clearly defined collection, you should use the Card Catalog.
In every chapter in this workbook (with the exception of chapter 8 on AncestryDNA), I’m going to describe the main categories and subcategories of the Card Catalog, then show you how to filter your results to find specific record types or collections to use in your research. Many of the exercises use the Card Catalog, and I invite you to search along with me. (Some exercises will also cover how and when to use the generic search forms).
Experimenting with different combinations of titles, keywords, and filters can produce a myriad of results.
You can learn more about a collection by hovering over its name in your Card Catalog search results.
If you want to find photos, I suggest you begin your search in three kinds of resources: school yearbooks (more than 370 million records), the Pictures category (thirty-eight collections that include millions of images), and Public Member Trees (more than two billion trees). While other categories of records will have photos, these kinds of records have the most by far. I went to the Card Catalog and filtered for Pictures first, then selected USA > Missouri as additional filters. This returned fifteen results; of those, I felt that “U.S. Historical Postcards” would be a good fit.
Because I didn’t have anything specific in mind, I simply entered the name of the town in the Location search box. This returned more than one hundred thousand results. Why? Because Ancestry.com automatically added Sullivan as the county, so the search was bringing back Milan and Sullivan and Missouri. I decided to edit the search.
I selected Edit Search on the left (A) to return to the search page. This time I made the Location an exact search (B). The search now returned three hits, all of which were Milan.
Could I have found those images (or other images) with a different search approach? Yes, by searching the entire Pictures category. If you return to the Card Catalog home page and filter for the Pictures category, you’ll see a link at the top of the thirty-five-plus collections to search across all of the Pictures category.
What might you find? I could have searched for a specific person, but for now I only wanted to find pictures of Milan. The only thing I entered in the “search entire Pictures Category” form was Milan Missouri and I selected the Exact checkbox. This still returned more than fifteen thousand hits. As I skimmed down through them, it was apparent I was finding a lot of images of people on public family trees.
At this point, I went to the left side of the page to see which collections could help me narrow down my results (A).
Which collection would you choose? I decided to start with the collection with the smallest (i.e., most manageable) number of records; the numbers you see here are the number of actual records in each collection. Since there were only two in “Member and Institutional Collections,” I went there first. Unfortunately, both were articles, so no help there.
How about the “U.S. Family Photo Collection, c. 1850–2000”? As suspected, all five were people pictures, not place pictures. While not helpful to my search, the Sears Catalog (B) was interesting because the images were of freight rates between various destinations. (I like filling everyday information into my family tree, so I thought it was cool to discover that in 1924, it cost $1.22 to ship 100 pounds from Chicago to Milan first class.) Besides “U.S., Historical Postcards,” the other collections would contain photos of people, so I didn’t click there.
What did I learn? First, that I could find the Milan photos in two different ways: by just making what I felt was a logical choice of collections, and also by eliminating other possibilities one by one. Which is best? Both, because while I didn’t find any more Milan photos, I did find the little Sears tidbit that will go into my family book.
Why find an abstract? An abstract contains the pertinent information from a document, such as names, dates, and places. A will abstract, for example, will include the name of the person making the will, the date, the people named in the will, the place, and any other relevant information. An abstract simply abstracts material from a document; it does not transcribe it word for word. To start looking for one on Ancestry.com, go to the Card Catalog and type abstract in the Title box. You’ll see there are less than thirty collections containing abstracts.
I typed abstract in the Keyword(s) box instead, giving me forty-five results. If I had typed abstract in both the Keyword(s) and Title boxes, I would still only get the twenty-eight results from Step 1, because with those terms, I’m telling the system to limit results to the collections containing the word abstract in their titles.
As I was looking for North Carolina records, I typed abstract into the Title box and north carolina into the Keyword(s) box, resulting in eight hits (A). I selected “Abstract of North Carolina Wills, 1663–1760” and searched for John Snow.
Now here’s the tricky part: If I didn’t check the Exact box for both John and Snow, the search returned pages that had the word john and the word snow but not necessarily in the same name. When I checked Exact, I found five results. One of them (B) was of a family member. The information abstracted only the pertinent information.
One last point about this particular collection: Although you can use the collection’s search box, you’ll see that you can read through the entire book on the right side of the page. I suggest reading at least the introduction when using this or any collection that allows browsing a book. That’s because introductions typically give additional information about the resource; in this case, you’ll find an explanation of the use of a person’s mark instead of a signature, the misleading use of mother-in-law and father-in-law, and information about whether original spelling was preserved.
