How to search RootsWeb's archives How to search the web with Google
How to search newsgroups with Google Groups (advanced search)
Search all of GENUKI
Let's say you've just discovered an interest in your family's history ....
Why ? doesn't matter ..
You've lost your parents and now wish: "I'd listened to all those stories they told me when I was young "
Who am I ? where do I come from ?
I wonder if there was any truth in the story that GGG-Uncle Fred won a medal in WWI
My best friend at school has the same surname ! I wonder if we're related ?
At some point in time you are going to find
RootsWeb
and start posting messages and actively "searching for" others
with the same interests.
Time to search the RootsWeb archives ..
I'm going to talk about the YORKSGEN archives here but it applies to all list archives.
And there are a lot:
Global lists, country lists, state lists, county lists, surnames, even surnames in a particular area.
Then the special areas .. FreeBMD, TheShipsLists, etc. etc. etc.
Each list has an introductory page .. in our case:
http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl?list=YORKSGEN
If you click on this link it will open a new window
and you can switch to and fro
If you are looking for mentions of a rare surname then typing
that in will be enough ..
of course, if it's very rare, you may not find anything !
If it's SHAW, HAIGH, DYSON, SMITH OR JONES
then you could spend 100s of hours searching through each one .. which would be very boring !
So try a combination of surname and village (Dyson and
Huddersfield)
or
surname and first name (Dyson and Martha)
or
surname and spouses surname (Dyson and Shaw)
and you can of course combine these
(Dyson and Martha) and (Shaw and John)
spelling variations
(Cockshutt or Cockshut) and (Brearley or Brierley)
Note: if the list is an old one .. then you must do these searches for each year
One of the advantages of have a rare surname is that someone
may already be researching it
and really does have your tree going back generations. You can see a list of
names being researched
globally at the Guild Of One Name Studies
.. also known as GOONS
Spelling variations .. don't ignore a name because it's not written exactly the same as yours ..
Remember: most of our ancestors couldn't read or write
so the spelling in parish registers was up to the priest.
For a collection of over 100 spelling variations for one name click here :-)
HOW TO SEARCH THE IGI
I've already written about this on my Bolsterstone Genealogy Project web page.
I always use GOOGLE .. and not the standard view .. the advanced view. ..otherwise
a simple search for SHAW will find 1,970,000 pages !!
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Searching all the words: SHAW Yorkshire cuts it down to 18,000
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Searching all the words: SHAW
Yorkshire
and
With any of the words: Bradfield Ecclesfield turns
up 204 pages !!
Which is a handy amount and could very well bring a new branch for your tree.
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You could also try including the first name: John or Mary .. cuts it down to 23 pages !
Try it out here:
How to search newsgroups with Google Groups (advanced)
Try the same steps as above ..
either searching all news groups or just the ones relating to genealogy.