Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It's Saturday Night again
-
Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:
2) List the surnames and how many entries there are when you do an exact name search. What does this tell you? Have you found Wills for all of your ancestors with these names?
3) Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, or on this post.
NOTE: FamilySearch has been adding more data to the Wills collections.
Here’s mine:
I followed Randy’s example as shown here:
* On the Full-Text Search page (https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text),
I put my "Seaver" surname in quotes (to make it exact).
* I then used the "Record Type" filter to select
"Legal Records."
* Then on the "Legal Records" filter, I selected "Wills" to show only the records in that category.
My surnames on my mother’s side will have more hits, as they
have been in this country for many generations. Here are their results of
great-grandparent’s surnames:
Johnston: 79,986
Hutson: 2,372
Lancaster: 35,126
Loveless: 1,297
I am not surprised by Johnston and Lancaster having high numbers.
My father’s names are:
Hork: 1953
Sievert: 92
Sullivan: 53,764
Gleeson: 858
I am surprised by the number for Hork. Likely a misreading of Hork for York or something else.
My husband’s father’s side are:
Gorrell: 2193
Schotts: 55
Davey: 5088
Wollenweber: 53
And his mother’s side, who were more recent immigrants:
Nilsen: 81
Anderson: 155,803
Lundquist: 155
Eriksson: 35
Neither the Andersons nor the Eriksson came to the US, so
these are not likely kin.
I am surprised by some of these numbers. Of course, I would further narrow these results down by selecting a place, then perhaps even a span of years, so I don’t have to look at so many records. I was surprised to see North Carolina wills available for 1964!
I have enjoyed so far using this every-word search on FamilySearch, but have used it more by drilling down to location and time.
That is a lot of Johnstons! But I suspect Sievert and Wollenweber aren't very common, and those are much smaller numbers, so maybe something promising lies there.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. Plus, many records I have found for the Johnstons have been spelled Johnson.
DeleteIt seems to be very typical that we all have some really common surnames in the family, along with a few much rarer names. However, Full-Text search is absolutely a game changer for us!
ReplyDeleteYes, it is!
Delete