And we're playing with FamilySearch Full-Text Search again this week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver!
Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.
1. How many "Wills" for your grandparents' or great-grandparents' surnames are in the FamilySearch Full-Text Search feature (see https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text)?
2. List the surnames and how many entries there are when you do an exact name search. What does this tell you? Have you found wills for all of your ancestors with these names?
3. Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.
I used Randy's method of searching so I would have results I could compare directly:
* On the Full-Text Search page, I put my surname in quotes (to make it exact).
* I then used the "Record Type" filter to select "Legal Records."
* Then on the "Legal Records" filter, I selected "Wills" to show only the records in that category.
Something to note is that not all records that appear under "Wills" are actually wills.
And my list is:
• Armstrong: 42,662 results
• Brainin: 4 results
• Dunstan: 386 results
• Gaunt: 1,203 results
• Gauntt: 201 results
• Gordon: 65,123 results
• Gorodetsky: 0 results
• Mackler: 137 results
• Meckler: 107 results
• Mekler: 4 results
• Novitsky: 2 results
• Nowicki: 40 results
• Sellers: 15,657 results
I listed thirteen names because I accounted for some variables. My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Gauntt, but along with various family members spelling it Gaunt, before standardized spelling one person's name could appear either way. My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Gordon, but her father's name was originally Gorodetsky. My paternal grandfather's name was Meckler, but I have seen his father's name as Mekler, and later in his life my great-grandfather spelled it Mackler. My paternal grandfather's mother's maiden name was Nowicki, but other family members who immigrated to the United States (including her father) often spelled it as Novitsky (to maintain the correct pronunciation).
What do these results tell me? Well, I was not that surprised to see no results for Gorodetsky (suggesting that immigrants with that surname routinely changed it), but a little surprised at only four results for Brainin. I didn't think the name was that uncommon. I did not expect Mackler to have more results than Meckler or Mekler, and I definitely didn't expect Nowicki (the original spelling, which I suspect Americans often mispronounced) to top Novitsky. Perhaps these relative numbers will change as more documents are added to the collection.
I expected that Gordon, Armstrong, and Sellers would have the most results. I also expected the Gaunt spelling to have more than Gauntt (the spelling my grandmother and her family used). I'm sure that most, if not all, of the Gordon results are unrelated to my family, as that name only began with my great-grandfather.
Let's see, which wills do I have for my ancestors? The only one that comes to mind is for my great-grandfather Morris Meckler/Mackler. I have not prioritized obtaining wills. I suspect many of my ancestors died intestate, based on information I have. But I should go out hunting for more wills.
I did see one Gauntt result that almost definitely is related to my family, as it included people in Burlington County, New Jersey. None of the names is in my family tree at this point, though, so it's a collateral line.
Cool that you found something that might be in your family. Without digging deeply, I didn't find any counties of interest.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing about the one I did see was that it was actually in Philadelphia. But the teaser text that was shown included that people were in Burlington County. And if they're Gauntts in Burlington County, they almost certainly connect to my family at some point. But when I restricted the search to New Jersey, that result didn't come up.
Delete