Genealogy Tip: Search Surname & Year Only for More Results

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Tom Kemp

I recently received an email from some GenealogyBank users, asking why they couldn’t find any newspaper articles about a tragic death that occurred in 1956:

“We are having trouble finding information about a couple of deaths in our area. A couple, Wilbert Arvo Pernu and Dagmar Charlotte Bolborg Pernu, died by asphyxiation on 8 December 1956 in St. Louis County, Minnesota. Dagmar’s third name is sometimes spelled Valborg. Her maiden name was Sather. She went by ‘June.’ We would like to find a newspaper article, if there was one. Can you help?”

They knew the full names of the deceased and the general facts of the fatal tragedy, including when and where it happened. Why were they having trouble getting results for their newspaper archives searches?

When searching through 1.4 billion newspaper articles, it can sometimes be difficult to get results matching your search terms because you never know how much information the newspapers included about your target ancestor in their articles. What names did they use? What key terms?

For best results, you want to look for the most unique information to use as your search terms.

In this example it is the couple’s surname “Pernu” and the fact that they died in December 1956.

I began the search with just those two clues, putting Pernu in the surname box and December 1956 in the date box on the search form.

That generated two possible matching news articles. One of the results was the article they needed.

Monoxide Kills Two in Stalled Auto, Aberdeen Daily News newspaper article 9 December 1956

Aberdeen Daily News (Aberdeen, South Dakota), 9 December 1956, page 14

If this old news article about the tragedy was so easy to find, why did the email writers have such trouble finding it?

It was probably because they were typing in too much information in GenealogyBank’s search boxes.

There is a natural tendency to want to narrow our search results by typing in all of the information that we have about our target ancestor or the circumstances around an event.

But quite often: less is more.

Resist that desire to be very specific in your searches—try your initial searches using unique, minimal information.

Here are some of the reasons why, in this instance, a more specific newspapers archive search would not return the desired article about the tragic accident:

The newspaper article did not include Wilbert Pernu’s middle name. If we had included it in our search, the results would not have found this article.
If we had included the name of the wife (Dagmar Charlotte Bolborg Pernu), her maiden name (Slather), or that she went by the name “June,” then we also would not have found this article. Why? Because she was not named in the article; it simply referred to “Wilbert Pernu…and his wife.”
Notice that they were tragically killed in Minnesota—but the article describing the events appeared in a South Dakota newspaper. If we had limited the search to only Minnesota newspapers we would not have found this article.
I limited the search to the month and year (December 1956) and not to a specific date.

Genealogy Search Tip: Focus your search on the surname, especially when it is a distinctive surname. Use a wide date range, such as a year, and do not limit your search to a specific date. If you find that this search produces too many or too few search results, then you can narrow or expand your search until you find your target articles.

Handy Genealogy Research Tips

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Tom Kemp

Here are three quick tips to help you research and document your family history. These handy genealogy research tips will help you become more efficient using GenealogyBank.

Genealogy Research Tip 1: How to Print Newspaper Articles

GenealogyBank makes it easy to print out any of its newspaper articles using the site’s printing tools. Read this article to learn how to print newspaper articles.

Genealogy Research Tip 2: How to Browse a Specific Issue of a Newspaper

Sometimes when you are doing family history research you just want to go right to a specific newspaper and start searching or browsing through that newspaper. GenealogyBank provides an easy way to do this. Read this article to learn how to search or browse a specific newspaper.

Genealogy Research Tip 3: Having Trouble Finding Your Ancestor? Try Searching Using Only the First Name

Yes—try it. If you’re not finding your ancestor using a surname search, try searching GenealogyBank’s archives by only using your ancestor’s first name. This search technique is especially effective when the name of your ancestor is unusual or a less common name. Learn more about searching using only your ancestor’s first name.

Screenshot of GenealogyBank’s search form and results for first name “Durwood”

We hope these quick genealogy research tips help you do better family history research using GenealogyBank.com. Happy ancestor hunting!

GenealogyBank Search Tip: Search U.S. Newspapers by City or State

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Tom Kemp

Want to search the local newspapers from only one state, city or town? It is easy to do that in GenealogyBank.

GenealogyBank’s list of U.S. states for selecting newspapers to be searched

In the middle of GenealogyBank’s homepage is a list of all 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia. Simply pick the state you want to focus your genealogy research on.

In this example I will use Ohio. Once I click on the Ohio link, it brings me to a page listing all 131 Ohio newspapers currently in our online archives. The newspapers are divided into two main collections: Newspaper Archives and Recent Obituaries.

GenealogyBank landing page to access its 131 Ohio newspapers

Click on the top link, Search Ohio Newspaper Archives (1801 – 1991), to search all of the back issues of our Ohio digital newspaper archives.

Search form for GenealogyBank’s Ohio newspaper archives

Use these search forms from the U.S. state newspaper archives to search newspapers from only the specific state you are researching your family history in.

Want to search newspapers at the city or town level?

That type of local newspaper search is also easy to do in GenealogyBank. Each state search page lists all the cities and towns in that state for which we have newspapers.

Simply click on the name of the city or town. In this example I will pick Cincinnati, OH.

Search form for GenealogyBank’s Cincinnati newspaper archives

Now you may search all of Cincinnati’s local newspapers as a group, or check the boxes to search only the newspapers that you select.

Use this approach to narrow down your search geographically when there is a specific state, city or town where you want to concentrate your genealogy research.

Genealogy Search Tips for Ancestors’ Names: Less Is More

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Tom Kemp

Beginning genealogists sometimes write us and say: “I put in the correct information for my search—full name including middle name, birth date, last known place of residence, etc.—everything I know about my ancestor, and yet I found no matching records. I did this search for a few other ancestors after I was told that there was no record of death. I have seen these names on the Social Security Death Index before. How come I can’t find that information now?”

Be flexible in your ancestor name search

What you want to do is limit your family searches to the basic, essential information, typing in just enough to find your target ancestor without getting back too many hits.

For example, your ancestor’s full name might have been John Henry Thompson—but the editors of the newspaper simply called him “Bif Thompson,” the name he was known by in the community for the past 30 years.

The Social Security Death Index has records for 4,266 persons with the first name “Buddy,” 25,947 records with the first name “Tommy,” and one record for a person named “Bif.”

Now Bif, Buddy and Tommy just might be the first name on their birth certificates, but it is more likely that these are a nickname or the diminutive form of their formal name (for example, “Tommy” for “Thomas.”)

When these people’s names are indexed there is no way to know that “Bif Thompson,” for example, was actually “John Henry Thompson.”

There are over 1.3 billion names in GenealogyBank, and we index them exactly as the names appeared in the original record. So you want to be flexible in how you search for a name.

Search using only your ancestor’s surname, limited by date range if necessary

Most surnames are unique. You will learn by genealogy research experience if a search using only a surname will generate too many hits. If it does, then limit your search by a range of years—for example: 1950–1975. That will usually enable you to pull up just enough search result hits so that you can locate your target ancestor.

GenealogyBank search form for surname “Starbird” between the years 1950-1975

By searching for all persons surnamed Starbird from 1950–1975, you will then find all of those records regardless of whether the editor included their first name, middle name, initials, or nicknames.

Give the surname search, limited by date ranges, a try.