Family history search tips

This page helps explain the use of the various searchable databases on this website.

Search Tips

† When searching for an entry in one of our databases, you must use at least two characters.

† You can use either UPPER or lower case as the search is not case sensitive.

† The wildcard facility can assist searching using the asterisk [*] as a wild card. If you do not know the spelling of a name or place, or you wish to look for spelling variants, try using the wild card technique:

1. If you wish to look for spelling variants, try John* will find all words starting with john as in John, Johns, Johnson, Johnston, Johnstone.
2. You can also use it to find groups of entries with the same first word such as de* will find de Jaunay (as well as all names starting with de as in Delaney etc. You can also use it to find groups of entries with the same first word (i.e. west*).
3. You can use the wildcard search even if you do not know the initial letter and this is particularly useful in dealing with Scottish names when the prefix may be Mac or Mc. Moreover some generations drop this prefix and so *don* will find Macdonald, McDonald and Donald as well as a range of other names. Likewise *orl* will reveal Horlick and Orlick, etc.
4. Two asterisks can expand the search even further as in *ton* will locate a range of names from Barton to Stone.
5. Three asterisks expands the search even further as in *b*t*n will locate Alberton, Barton, Boston, Bitten, Thebarton, etc.

† If there is more than one page of results there will be a Next page button located at the bottom of the page. There is also a Click for new search link if you wish to start a new search.

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