Search Engines - Family History Tricks and Treats - by using the Internet wisely

• Dunfermline, Fife - Young
  • family letter - saddlers
• Ireland - Civil Engineering
  • Wiliam Maxwell, John Algie, Lisduff House, Ballinasloe
  • Lisduff House - real Estate - photos
    • search every 6 months - important
    • I had to be tactful and able to read source code
  • Algie - land records - plus Maxwell - Farm Designer in East Galway, after the potato famine
• Methods I use with search engines
  • Alta Vista - Shows me the number of hits, Google is similar
  • Use double quotes "Hugh Reekie"
  • Note that Google is more aggressive in "listing" new pages with its 'spider'.
    • GEDCOM-generated FH pages may not get listed on search engines
  • If over 50 hits, don't read - do another search - either:
    • More specific - add another specialized word
    • Retain generality, but force a sort
      • add a simple word - e.g Scotland or "Family history" - and read the first 20 or so
  • Read up on the "rules" under advanced search
    • Hors* horse, horses, horsemanship etc
  • More and more people are finding me because my web pages are on Google and they are interested in what they see
    • Not just family history - other pages, too

• Specialist lookups
• Books have detailed indexes produced
• Various GENUKI volunteers are prepared to help
  • Central Wales - Dyfed, Cardigan, Pembroke is well set up for personal e-mail replies
• Good for background on trades - 1820 era trade directories, searchable, available
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• Many "mini" 1851 census lists availble - esp for Scotland - permitted by SRO
  • Dumfries and Galloway have a searchable 1851 Census - not widely known
  • Be careful about name spellings
  • Paterson, Patterson & Shawbrae
• Kirkcaldy Kirk Session minutes for 1650 -1790 available at
  • A downloaded file- from Fife fam Hist Soc - 1.1 meg kirkaldie.pdf . .
  • Kinross Cleish 1841 census at: http://member.melbpc.org.au/~andes/cleishx.html
  • Other Kinross 1841 Census available - see http://member.melbpc.org.au/~andes/scotland.html
  • A Scots census index is at: www.scotsgenealogy.com/library/census.htm - who has transcribed and published what

• Started in January 2004 - very powerful and convenient
• Shows realated places, especially parish names, and chaples/churches in the area
  • convenienty iner-related to church photos and summary record information

• Many BIFHSGO members haver present and back copies of quarterly County FH soc newsletters
  • contain very useful, specialist infomation
    • Cardiganshire- Victorian School registration lists available
  • especially "members interests;" listing that are constrained geographically
  • GRD is an annual publication of merit
  • GENUKI County names lists are very poweful
  • Let's start an informal "exchange" with available newsletter indexes
• Many Family History Societies will do "lookups" from specialized documents
  • The documets are usually listed on web site
  • Usually a fee for non-members
  • For members, the situation varies
  • Looking at atricle titles may match up either a family or trade
    • In my case, Williams, Blaen Pennal, Cardiganshire, and Drover matched up
    • The articles were VERY interesting, but the author insisted that the is no family connection!!
• Scottish Family History Society - In addition to a shop a dna research centre in Edinburgh,
  • existing genealogies ion filer are listed at: http://www.scotsgenealogy.com/fhi/fhi_m.htm

• Schools - Dollar Academy
• Trades - apprentice lists etc

• Simple text files, suitably named
  • Cut 'n paste
  • define sources, date accessed
  • Be careful to define what you have, and have not, selected
  • Wills, sasine, trestaments, church session records, census searches etc
• I summarize gathered information onto a web page - whether published or not!.
  • Bennoch
  • Williams & hymn writers
  • Drovers of Central Wales

• Abebooks.com - Victoria BC
  • Use it for information
  • Book descriptions often have useful information in the description
  • Libray searches
• US Library of Congress
  • Many books - older non-copyright - available - image scan
  • Playford's dance manuals

Page maintained by Hugh Reekie- h.reekie@ ieee.org - comments and suggestions welcome