| Below you will find some useful information about this search engine. Please see “Search Tips”, “Abbreviations Used” and “About Your Results”. If you found something of interest and would like to order it, please use the PDF Order Form on the Results page. If you didn’t find anything on this visit, please check back at a later date as we are adding items frequently. |
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| SEARCH TIPS |
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Either the LAST NAME field or MAIDEN NAME field must contain an entry. The entry can be in the form of a single letter that the name begins with (“S”), a partial name (“Smi”) or a complete last name (“Smith”). The more letters you enter, the more specific the results will be. It should be noted that only a small percentage of maiden names were reported in obituaries during the years 1890 to 1920. On the Search page, do not use any spaces between parts of a name. If you are looking for “Mc Carthy” type in “MCCARTHY”, or “Van Pelt”, type in “VANPELT”. Use “DEREMER” instead of “De Remer”. Do not use any form of punctuation in any of the fields. Use “OLAUGHLIN” instead of “O’Laughlin”. Our search engine is not case sensitive. Any and all of the letters can be typed in any combination of upper and lower case. You will find one of the most useful features on the Results page. You can sort all the entries in any given return simply by clicking on the heading. When the little black arrow appears, click on the heading a second time. If you want to reverse the sort, click on the heading again. This feature works with all of the headings. You may find this feature particularly useful if you have a common surname. The first items listed in the results for each surname are those wherein no first name was reported. They are followed by listings of first names in alphabetical order. A common surname may have many listings with no first name reported. By reversing the order your results will start with first names beginning with “Z” and you can work backwards from there. You can narrow your search by using one or more of the additional parameters. Each is described below: FIRST NAME – Entries in this field operate in the same fashion as the Last Name and Maiden Name fields in that if you type in a “C”, you will get all the first names that begin with “C”. If you type “Ca” you will get results that contain first names such as Cal, Carl and Casper. MIDDLE INITIAL – If you know the person’s middle name, type the first letter of that name in this field. Some people had multiple middle names. Our search engine will only search for the first letter of the first middle name reported. COUNTRY – Select from the countries offered on the drop down list. STATE/PROVINCE – If you are only interested in returns from a particular state or province, enter it here. COUNTY – This field refers to the county where the publication from which the item was extracted is located. If you know the county you are interested in, type it in here. YEAR RANGE – With this field it is important to remember that we only currently cover the years 1890 to 1920, so your entries should fall between those years. If you leave the year range fields blank, you will get everything between 1890 and 1920. |
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ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE “OTHER INFORMATION” FIELD |
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Standard state and province postal abbreviations are used. For a listing of those abbreviations look under the “Tools” tab on the Welcome page. The following abbreviations are also used: (Bn = Born) (Fa of = Father of) (Mo of = Mother of) (Dau of = Daughter of) (Wif of = Wife of) (Hus of = Husband of) (Bro of = Brother of) (Sis of = Sister of) (Wid of = Widow of) (Rct of = Relict of) (Chd of = Child of) (FnL of = Father-in-Law of) (MnL of = Mother-in-Law of) (SnL of = Son-in-Law of) (DnL of = Daughter-in-Law of) (G Son of = Grandson of) (G Dau of = Granddaughter of) (S Son of = Step son of) (A Son of = Adopted son of) (Clrd - Colored) (Abt = About) (Cty = County) (Rev = Reverend) (Capt = Captain) (Dr = Doctor) (Col = Colonel) (Gen = General) (Pte = Private) (Cpl = Corporal) (Prof = Professor) (AKA = Also Known As) (KIA = Killed in action) (P or Pgs = Pages) |
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ABOUT YOUR SEARCH RESULTS |
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If your results indicate that an individual was the father or mother of someone, it does not mean that they weren’t also the father or mother of other children. In most cases the most unusual child’s name was entered to help better identify who this individual is. This holds true for brother of, sister of, etc. It is quite possible that you will find the same person represented more than once. This can occur for the following reasons: Someone may have died in Arizona but the person’s hometown was in Kansas. It is possible that an item appeared in both locations. A person may have been well known in a number of counties surrounding his or her own, and an item appeared in the other counties as well. Occasionally you will find a news story and an obituary for the same person. There may be more than one publication for a particular county that was researched. Lastly, on occasion, a newspaper may have published two obituaries for the same person a few days apart. We have found that if a person is represented more than once, the information contained in each of the items is frequently somewhat different. Please remember that the county field refers to the location of the publication from which the item was extracted. |
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