FamilySearch

[RosemaryC]

Many records in the US and Canada do list full names for both the mother and father, which can be extremely handy in finding people who have emigrated. Because my ancestors moved between Scotland, Ireland and England and Canada and the US, I have found such parent searches very useful in a number of cases, as more recent records in Canada and the US often do give both names. It is important, of course, to include the mother's maiden surname in the search engine.

 

[Jacqueline]

The "usual caveats" about IGI are radically different from what they once were. The databases have been completely separated and are clearly identified as to their type. This means that unlike in the past where the "submitted by member of the church" records (aka sometimes no better than a random guess) were mixed in with the carefully transcribed records and so "IGI" search produced poor results, these days you get results from "proper" databases.

With the new search there are considerably more databases online than just the old IGI database. In fact the old IGI database is just a small part of the databases it searches. It is possible to specify a specific old databases to do an old style "IGI" search of just the transcribed records but I don't know why anyone would bother. So these days on the familysearch.org website its actually quite tricky to limit your searches to just the IGI database. As such its not really that relevant to call the familysearch website "the IGI".

So the only real caveats are about relying on a secondary source such as family search, however that caveat equally applies to FreeBMD, FreeReg etc which are also transcription sites, yet you don't hear people typically warning about caveats on that site, even though they should!

I would bother with the old search only for those things which have specific dob or date of baptism entered by "members" who perhaps had access to a family bible or suchlike where it seems to be the only such reference in captivity. Amongst the rubbish, there were the odd gems.
The new site is so useful! Especially where the PRs have been added like Norfolk. I have a good lead nowat last on my Mary Riches born Norwich c 1775.

 

[Jacqueline]

Keep in mind though that a lot of records don't have mother's maiden names, the records in England being spectacularly bad at recording a maiden name, given the old convention that the wife effectively became the property of the husband. So for some countries a parent search isn't great due to there being far too many John Smith's married to a Mary something. In those countries where the convention was different and the wife retained her maiden name, often reverting to it after becoming a widow, we have a better chance of a decent result with a parent search. Unfortunately its the luck of the draw where your family hails from. You might even be lucky as some English parishes recorded a maiden name it was down to the individual scribe. Convention is that you get father's name and mother's forename.

I think the mothers' maiden names are important to those non-conformists in Calvinist (not sure about Lutheran, but I think not) influenced churches eg French Huguenots and "the Kirk" where marriage was a civil business rather than a religious one. I first came upon them while researching my Orange ancestors, refugees from the Rouen area of Normandy in the 1670s and '80s, before realising that Scottish records were the same. Unfortunately, I'm rather short of Scots who went to Northumberland - Heppples and Proudlocks via Laidlaws from Selkirk.

 

[peter]

The new site is so useful! Especially where the PRs have been added like Norfolk. I have a good lead now at last on my Mary Riches born Norwich c 1775.

You may not feel the same after reading my next newsletter.....

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Hopefully your newsletter will dispel some of the negative myths about the new search. ie: Just because you don't yet know where to find something doesn't mean it doesn't work.