Old Bones Family Research of New England: Search tips... Soundex...

Search tips can be very helpful, even for an experienced genealogist. Everyone falls into a rut from time to time or a particular set of web sites are used and others forgotten. I liked Linkpendium for a while, but it never earned a place in my "must look at" list. Having said that, it's back on the priority list. See, I even have to listen to myself once in a while!

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="75"]

Genealogy books (Photo credit: webduckie)[/caption]

The fact remains that although millions of records are going on line every day but that there are billions to go! We all have to remember that "it's not all on line!" But with all that being said, I want to share the tip that I posted on a Facebook page that I co-administer "Genealogy - Improving your searches." This is a simple one, but a lot of people reacted to it and "Liked" it! [You might also want to visit "Find A Grave Genealogy Discussion."]

It's fairly simple. I wrote of the "Soundex Code" and how you should at least be aware of what it is so that you don't shy away from using it in your on-line searches. It is not, however, a cure-all for hard to find ancestors! Simply put, its a 4 character replacement for any surname. It was used to file index cards that referenced microfilm records. The first character is the first letter of the surname, with special consideration for "De" or "Van". The next 3 positions are numbers representing the next three consonants in the name. Vowels and the letters w, h, and y are skipped. Also skipped are double consonants where only one of them is considered. That's it! Click on "Soundex Code" for one of many explanations. This one's from Rootsweb.

What did we need this for?? "Old Timers" will remember doing the conversions and then going over to a card file, finding the section with your Soundex number and then flipping through the (supposedly) alphabetically arranged cards for a reference to the microfilm number and page where your ancestor SHOULD be!

In truth, you don't need it. But I don't want anyone to shy away from picking "Use Soundex results" in the search filter choices at Ancestry.com or Americanancestors.org for example. The cautionary piece is that if one of the letters that have to be converted to a number has been transposed say by an enumerator or an indexer, you'll never find your target based on Soundex. Here's an example: "PATRAKIS" versus "PARTAKIS". The Soundex for the first spelling is P362 while the soundex for the second is P632. That's because the "T" and the "R" have been transposed. So in the conversion the "3" and the "6" would also be transposed. Good luck with that one!!!

See! That was easy!