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Tips on How to Search for Your Ancestor Required
Information
What Searches Are Invalid?
Tips for Searching for Your Ancestor
Search for Children of the Same Parents
Narrow Your Search
Return to Ancestor Search
Required
Information
You must enter at least:
- An individual's last name
(unless you search for children of the same parents).
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What
Searches Are Invalid?
FamilySearch will not search for:
- A first name only.
- Middle names. FamilySearch will ignore middle names unless you check the Use exact spelling box.
When you check Use exact spelling, the search will look for the individual's first, middle, and last
name exactly as you listed it. If you check Use exact spelling, you may
not list parents, spouse, event, year, or country.
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Tips for Searching for Your Ancestors
- You may search for just a last
name, but no more than 25 results will be displayed from each source that is searched.
From the results page, you can select a source in Sources Searched (the red box) to see
all the results from that source. Up to 200 results will be displayed on a page. Click
Next to look at more matching records from the same source.
- For common surnames, fill in
additional fields to improve your search results. You will get better results if you enter
an individual's first name and last name.
- You can use any combination of
the parents' names with the individual's name.
- You can use any combination of
the spouse's first name and last name with the individual's first name and last name.
- Last names are standardized so
that spelling variations are retrieved in the results.
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Search for Children of the Same
Parents
To search for children of the same
parents, enter:
- The father’s first and
last name.
- The mother’s first name
(the mother’s last name is optional).
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Narrow
Your Search
You may now use the following to
make your search more specific:
- Event
- Year range (If you select year range,
you must provide a year in the Year box.)
- Year
- Country
- Use exact spelling (If you check Use exact spelling, you may not list
parents, spouse, event, year, or country.)
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