My Trails into the Past

Full-text search has been a game-changer in genealogy research because it pulls up names and phrases in documents that have no index. I have found some great treasures using it in my own family research. However, after using it for the past year, I realized that not all records are searched using this new tool. So I have a strategy I use. First, use the FamilySearch catalog to get to the place of interest. Second, check the type of record you’re interested in and see if they are digital (ie. a camera is showing) and that they are not locked from home. If the camera is showing a lock, then full-text won’t show any results from those films while viewing from home. For the court records in Erath County, I see some of the films are locked and some are open from home. Third, check that the symbol of a sheet of paper with the + sign is showing. That means the film is full-text searchable. If there is no symbol, then those records won’t turn up in a search. In the image above, the last f...

This past Saturday, I attended the Board for the Certification Ed Fund presentation given by Judy G. Russell and Carolyn Ladd. The theme of the day was studying documents, creating citations, and learning the law to understand the documents’ meaning. It was a great day of learning. I thought I would show how I gather the information when locating a document on FamilySearch ’s full-text search. Crafting a citation is not straightforward. I have to go to several screens to gather the information needed. Searching Let’s start with finding a document on Full-text search. I always put the search in quotes in the keyword box. Once I get the returns, I then filter using the place first, down to the county level. If I still have too many hits, I’ll filter by the year, working through the decades. Collecting Citation Information The following image shows the second document from the returns list. From this view, I see the page number, 332. The deed actually begins on page 331, so I will wan...