Genealogy Chat

Thank you very much to everyone for your help with this I will save the information so I don't forget again
Regards Sandra :-)

Have you tried just first names? If you know birth years & places, this can work well - sometimes the transcriptions are way out, but you can spot them when scrolling down. Just as an example, if your family's surname is Siddon it might be mis-transcribed as Liddon, but you would probably see this and realise they are yours..
Jan

I don't think you can use wildcards on scotlandspeople, but the surnames options are quite broad, so, for instance, you can type in the first three letters and select "names beginning with" or use surname variants or soundex.

Sorry to disagree Reggie but for a while you have been able to search Ancestry without the three lette rule.

For example I can search for 'Worwood' by..

*wood
w*w*d
w?rw*d
*d*w*o*d
w*r??d*
etc

The only rule seems to be that there must be a minimum of three letters used in the search and you cannot use a wildcard at the beginning and end of a word. So you cannot use...

*woo*
?ood*
*d?r*d*
etc

Chris

Thank you Reggie I will try that.
Regards Sandra

Ancestry requires three letters before a wild card....use only ONE asterisk

But...experiment.......see what comes up

Well for instance on Scotlands People or on Ancestry
I am researching Scott family from Kilmarnock Scotland 1785 upwards.
There is only a couple I haven't got and I think I have exhausted all avenues.
I am now grasping at straws.

depends what you are searching for and where

do yyou want someone else to ave a go,? if so, tell us the details

Does anyone know ?

If you can't read or don't know the whole surname you are searching is there a way you can search the person by printing the first one or two letters of the surname then add ** or something like that?

I think it was mentioned on here once.

Thanks Sandra