Browsing Instead of Searching at Fold3

During the government shutdown, Brian Rhinehart of CivilWarRecords.com, presented a webinar, “Researching Your 19th Century Ancestors,” about researching military records at Fold3. His pitch was to help support his employees since they could not work at the National Archives while it was closed. Learning to do better searching at Fold3 is always welcome, and I liked the idea of supporting those who were caught in the shutdown.

I didn’t attend live, as I had other obligations, and watched the recording later, which turned out better because we had exercises to try out his methodologies. Seeing the recording allowed me to work on the problems without any stress.

The way Fold3 is set up is different from most websites, where you enter a name in a search field and you’ll get all the documents about that person or persons with similar names. You can do that at Fold3, but you won’t get everything. Fold3 is better searched using their browse feature. He used the analogy of file drawers. The war is the file cabinet, and the various states or units are the file drawers, and within the file drawer are folders that contain your ancestor’s records.

Browse Method
There are two places to press “browse:” (1) at the top where it says “Search & Browse” and (2) after selecting “Search & Browse,” there is another button on the far right that toggles between Search and Browse.

Locating a Record
I thought I would follow his instructions to locate information about Joseph H. McFall’s service during the Spanish-American War. He was from Indiana. After being in browse mode, I made the following selections:

1. Selected the Spanish-American War

2. Typed in “service” so the publications showing would be collections about service.

3. I found “US, Spanish-American War Service Record Index, 1898.”

4. I selected the state, which was Indiana.

5. Next column was to select the name, and I entered “McF.”

6. Scrolling through, I found 1 item for the surname McFall. Clicking on that brings up Joseph H.

Now that I have found Joseph H. McFall, I click through his name until I find the record.

Opening up the record, I can see the details of his service on this index card. He served in Co. H of the 158th Indiana Infantry and held the rank of corporal. This is just an index card. I have a list of items I want to order from the National Archives the next time my researcher friends go there, and now this service record is on the list.

Brian also showed us how to browse for pensions. The Spanish-American War pensions are filed with the Civil War Pensions, which I didn’t know. Instead of service, I typed in “pension.” Below is the browsing through the Civil War Pensions > Indiana > Infantry > Regiment 158.

However, when I select Regiment 158, only Company M shows up, not Company H. Now is the time to try the search method to see what I can find for Joseph H. McFall.

This time, unclick the browse and clear everything in the search box. Type in his name in quotes. Now I get a bunch of returns. One is the same card we found before. The entry after it is from the Civil War Pensions Index. Why didn’t it come up in the browse?

When I click on the card, I get more information. I now have the file number I can use to order his pension, too, from the National Archives.

After watching and practicing during the webinar, I am more comfortable searching and browsing in Fold3 records.

How is he related? Joseph H. McFall is my husband’s first cousin, two times removed. He is the son of Joseph McFall and Catherine Rose Davey. Catherine Davey is the sister of my husband’s great-grandfather, Frederick H. Davey.

#WebinarWednesday
This is a new series where I further investigate a topic after attending a webinar. This way, I am applying what I learned.

Copyright © 2011-2025 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.