{"id":632,"date":"2011-04-22T00:14:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T05:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/search-strategies-ancestry-part-2\/"},"modified":"2013-07-22T18:16:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T23:16:35","slug":"search-strategies-ancestry-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/search-strategies-ancestry-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Search Strategies: Ancestry \u2013 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Search Strategies:\u00a0 Ancestry \u2013 Part 1<\/a> I showed you how to set up the search screen that I personally use, which gives you more control and usually better results.\u00a0 Part 2 will discuss various tips for conducting actual searches with this setup using Soundex or wildcard searches.<\/p>\n

\"search3\"<\/p>\n

Soundex<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before I get into a discussion about wildcards, I want to talk about Soundex and it\u2019s limitations.\u00a0 Many of you already know what Soundex is and how it works.\u00a0 If you are not familiar with this or want to know more, Ancestry\u2019s Help<\/a> does a pretty good job explaining it and showing you how to convert a name into this code.<\/p>\n

While Soundex is all good and well, there are some limitations and problems, in my opinion.\u00a0 First, the first character in the code is based on the first letter of the name (e.g., Tarr = T-600).\u00a0 But, sound is the focus here, so when it\u2019s misread and misindexed as Farr, the T-600 Soundex code does me no good, because the code for Farr is F-600.<\/p>\n

The other problem is that a code can have so many different variants that are nothing like what you are looking for. For example, a Soundex search for John Tarr in Illinois produced 248 results for the 1920 census, including the following:\u00a0 Tayor, Trey, Try, Tarro, Toher, Troy, True, Toouriy, Tria, Towery, Terry, Tauer, Thayer, Their, Therry, Theiry, Thore, Thorne, Threw, Thuraw, Toor, Torew, Torri, Tower, Tredwell, Tree, Trehey, and Trow.<\/p>\n

Some of these don\u2019t even come close to sounding<\/em> like Tarr, but because of the value assigned to the letters, they all share the same code.\u00a0 For this reason, I personally do not use this method unless I am at a complete dead end.<\/p>\n

And finally, depending on the various spelling of a particular name, there could be more than one Soundex code that needs to be searched.\u00a0 For example the name Schwartz can be spelled with or without the \u201ct”,\u201d which yields two different codes (the \u201cc\u201d and the \u201ch\u201d have no bearing on the code in this case):<\/p>\n