APG-L Archives

Archiver > APG > 2003-06 > 1055811884


From: "Kimberly Powell, Genealogy Guide at About" <>
Subject: RE: [APG] wildcards at ancestry.com
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:05:45 -0400
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030604123026.03e0d3c8@mail.winco.net>


On 6/4/03 Michael John Neill wrote:
>>There was a time where on some databases at Ancestry, ending a search
term with a wild card might not bring about all results and if one was
reasonably certain of the last character, one should enter it. A quick
search today on the 1850 and 1860 censuses did not reveal that same
problem today so maybe there have been some changes made since the last
time I really got into the wildcards with the census indexes.<<

I can't speak for all wildcard searches, but in my experience and
according to several posts I've read on the Ancestry.com message boards
wildcard search works fairly accurately in the Global Search but is
still not working as it should in the U.S. Census Search. For example, a
recent search I tried in the U.S. Census search form for "Dem* Owens"
finds my "Dempsey Owens" listed as "Demdey Owens" in 1810, but misses
him listed as "Dempsey Owens" in 1800 and 1820; "Demprey Owens" in 1830,
and "Demsy Owens" in 1840. The same wildcard search on Ancestry.com's
Global Search form picks up all of the above (in the AIS indexes),
however. The Global Search also finds him in the 1860 mortality index.
No search brings him up in the 1850 census because, apparently,
Ancestry.com appears to have missed most of the county of Edgecombe, NC
in 1850 (only 187 matches for the entire county, as compared to 1544
matches in 1840)!

Kimberly Powell


This thread: