Ancestry question - Genealogists' Forum

Sally · #1 05-09-09, 18:27

Ohh grrrrrrrrr - why oh why do they have to change things for the worse. Am I right in thinking that the only way to trawl the marriage or birth records for entries that have not yet been transcribed is to fiddle your way to a list of the alphabet, then put in first letter of name you are looking for, then go through endless pages until you find the one page that you want? I see that deaths are still part of the old system, but they are proudly saying that they are working on it!!!

Merry · #2 05-09-09, 19:14

I have answered Qs like this one before, but usually am on a different wavelength to the poster! Sally, could you give us an example?

kiterunner · #3 05-09-09, 19:27

I would search for a name that is very close in the alphabet to the one you want, get the page up for that, and then browse through from there if it isn't the right page.

Sally · #4 05-09-09, 19:39

Yes, but you used to be able to just put the full name; then a year, and it would bring up the page with that name on for each quarter in that year. From there you could go to the next year and so on.
Now you have to trawl through all the "Ds" for example until you get to the page that you want, which takes so much longer.

You can still do it with deaths.
Am I the only one that finds it a pain then?!!

Joan of Archives · #5 05-09-09, 20:09

Sally give us the name you are looking for & I'll have a look so I can see what you mean? I know it's no longer straight forward so you have to become a bit devious lol!

Sally · #6 05-09-09, 20:31

Okay Joanie, and perhaps you can tell me where I am going wrong then.

I am looking for either the marriage, or death of Phoebe Downing born 1831 in Chester le Street, Durham. I have her in 1851 living with her uncle, along with two of her brothers.

I have searched the deaths from 1851 to no avail, but the marriage one is where I am struggling

samesizedfeet · #7 05-09-09, 21:46

try this:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec/?...d=0%3a7858%3a0

Sally · #8 05-09-09, 22:05

Thank you Zoe, but Joanie has just patiently explained it all to me on Skype!!! Certainly it's easier than the method I was using, but it's still not as good as the old way.

samesizedfeet · #9 05-09-09, 22:06

Sally

That link should take you to the old way of searching

WendyPusey · #10 06-09-09, 09:56

Why not use FeeBMD? It is so much easier to use than Ancestry.

http://freebmd.org.uk/