Genealogy Tips: How Do You Search a Name?

Introduction: In this article – the second in a new series presenting genealogy tips – Gena Philibert-Ortega shows various approaches to searching on an ancestor’s name. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”

How do you search your ancestor’s name? I know that may seem like an obvious question, but the answer can be important when we consider why you can’t find an ancestor. Searching a genealogy website like GenealogyBank is much more than just entering a name.

This is a multi-layered subject that we will explore in future blog articles, but for now, let’s consider a basic search on a female ancestor’s name with someone from my family history, using the GenealogyBank search engine for our example.

What’s Your Ancestor’s Name?

First, before we click on the Search button on the GenealogyBank search engine, we need to consider what our ancestor’s name is. For this example, I’ll use my 2nd great-grandmother, Marie Ann Bouffard (1864-1943), who spent much of her life in Canada and part of her married life in Massachusetts.

To begin, I did a basic search from the GenealogyBank homepage on the name Marie Bouffard. I chose to begin this search with her maiden name. I received 95 total historical newspaper results.

This isn’t too many results to go through them one by one, but since she spent the American part of her life in one state, I decided to narrow my search to the state of Massachusetts in order to narrow down the number of hits. I then received 40 hits. Unfortunately, after exploring all 40 results, none were relevant.

You may think that’s the end of my search. But – it’s just the beginning. There are other ways to search for her.

I could search her full name: Marie Ann Bouffard. I could also search by just her surname or her first initial and surname. I did try those searches but they too didn’t result in any relevant hits.

Now, you may be wondering why I was searching on her maiden name. After all, although she spent part of her married years in Massachusetts, her younger years were in Canada. My hope was that by searching her maiden name, I would find results in a U.S. newspaper that mentioned her parents or siblings. (As it turned out, as I will explain in a moment, this actually was the case – or, at least, it would have been were it not for a misspelling of the family name. See below.)

However, I know that she was alive in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when married women used their husband’s names. So, I need to search by her husband’s name, which might provide me results for both him and her.

Her husband, my 2nd great-grandfather, was Pierre Philibert (1866-1943). I conducted another basic search from the homepage, but this time on Pierre Philibert’s name. This search brought up 53 results in the historical newspaper collection.

When I narrowed my search to the state of Massachusetts, there were 5 results. One of those results was from a newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts. That wasn’t where I believed Marie and Pierre lived, but I decided to click on it anyway (a good lesson in not making assumptions). This particular newspaper article was an obituary for a Mrs. Lemieux, a name I didn’t recognize.

Scanning the newspaper article, I noticed a mention for Mrs. Pierre Philibert of Lowell (a city that I knew that Marie lived in) toward the bottom.

Reading the names of the other survivors, it became clear that Mrs. Lemieux was Marie’s sister – and that sister had a married name I didn’t recognize, thus a marriage I didn’t know about.

Genealogy Tip: Note that this paragraph spells the brothers’ surname as “Boufard,” which is why I didn’t find this article when I searched on Marie’s maiden name Bouffard. A good reminder to keep on trying variations of your ancestors’ names.

I also tried searching on Marie Philibert, just in case she was listed in a newspaper article with that name. Although there were some historical newspaper hits, none were relevant.

There were no other historical newspaper articles for Marie or Pierre. (At least, not yet: since GenealogyBank is constantly adding new newspaper titles and more content from existing newspapers, there could be articles about them in the future – so I need to periodically do new searches.)

Keep in mind, they did spend some of their lives together in Canada. Both were born there, and spent some of their married life there. GenealogyBank has only U.S. newspapers, and I wouldn’t expect to find coverage of their daily lives in Canada. My best bet is that one day they’ll turn up in articles from Massachusetts newspapers that GenealogyBank will add.

And what about their lives in Massachusetts? A quick search of GenealogyBank’s newspaper list (click on Browse at the top of the GenealogyBank homepage and then search Newspaper by State) shows that there are Lowell, Massachusetts, newspapers in both the historical newspaper collection and the obituaries collection.

Unfortunately, they are not for the dates that Marie and Pierre were alive. However, like Mrs. Lemieux’ obituary showed, that doesn’t mean that Marie won’t be in any newspaper found on the website. I need to start looking at the non-Massachusetts results in case she is mentioned in obituaries for her siblings or children.

As I mentioned, GenealogyBank is always adding newspapers – so in the future I may find their obituaries or other articles about their family. I need to set an alert for my searches of Marie and Pierre’s name, a very handy feature that GenealogyBank provides.

GenealogyBank has more than just newspapers. They have government documents and records, historical books, the Social Security Death Index, and the U.S. Census. I did find an additional result in the U.S. Census, so remember that you’ll want to explore results in other collections in addition to the historical newspapers. You’ll find these at the top of your results screen.

What’s Your Ancestor’s Name?

There are other ways to search a name and we will discuss those in future blog articles, but the lesson for this article is to make sure you search on all versions of a person’s name. And remember: if you are looking for a married woman, don’t forget to also search for her husband. You might just find her.

Related Article:

• Genealogy Tips: Discovering What Newspaper Content Is Available