Search Tips

Search Tips

On the Illinois State Marriage Index: http://www.ilsos.gov/isavital/marriagesrch.jsp, I was searching for a marriage of Nicholas Bradbury and Ida Allen.

Example 1: I entered bradbury, nicholas in the Groom's Name field and no results.  I then entered simply bradbury, with no first name and allen for the bride.  One result was displayed, but not Nicholas and Ida.  I then remembered how great this site is. You can enter just a letter or two, not a complete name.

So I entered brad for the groom and allen for the bride.  Nicholas and Idea came right up.

Turns out Bradburry is spelled with two "r's".  Never would have found this otherwise.


Example 2: I was looking for Samuel Brummell, getting married to Mary Foster. When I enter Brummell, Samuel, the marriage is not there.


However; when I enter brum for the groom and fost for the bride, they come right up.  He was indexed as S. M. Brummell.

Example 3: From the deaths I found the surname of a spouse but had no idea on the first name.  The name was listed as Durr on the death.

I went to the marriage site and entered for the groom dur.  For the bride, the name was brummell.  So I entered brum.  The record came right up showing the full name Charles F Durr.



Note: Anytime a record is transcribed by the human eye, because of poor handwriting and spelling, you must know the tricks.

Example 4: The name I was looking for as the death record gave a mother I didn't have.  So I wanted to see what the marriage stated. The name was George D. Foote married to Abigail Jane St. John.  That's the spelling.

I went to the marriage site and knowing that St. John might be problematic, I entered Foote, Geo just like I have it in my database.  No results.

So I entered simply Foot, Geo.  (No "e" at the end of "foot" and no name for the bride.)  This time, it came right up.  It was indexed as Foot, George D and spouse was Saint John, Abby Jane.

I never would have found it with the information I had.  The wonderful thing is this search method works for that entire site.

Example 5: I had a Schuyler Franklin on the deaths listed with a spouse as emma nort...  I went to the marriage site, entered Franklin, sc and nothing else.  It displays a butchered Franklin, Schyrilor to Emma Northcut.

Family History Library A to Z or 0,000,001 to 2,453,276 (and beyond)

The very first film in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City is film number 0,000,001. It contains the 420-page book entitled "Fay Genealogy" and is the history of the John Fay of Marlborough family, and was written by Orlin P. Fay.

 In the preface of this book, the author writes: "In 1859 a circular was sent out from Boston, Mass. addressed to the Fays, signed by Rev. Abner Morse, who was employed to collect material for a genealogy of the American Fay family.  He was succeeded by Hon. Charles Hudson, who also left the work unfinished and the papers were deposited in the safe of Hon. Frank B. Fay of Boston.  In 1895 he placed all of them in my hands, which gave me an opportunity to incorporate the record traced by Morse and Hudson with the 6,000 names I had secured since beginning the work in 1881, making a total of over 8,000 besides the 2,500 names added by marriage."

We wonder if he ever imagined that his work would become the very first film in the Family History Library.  Likewise, we may wonder if the work we are compiling might one day find its way into the films of the FHL.

Currently, the very last film in the FHL in Salt Lake City is film number 2,453,276. It contains the South Carolina state population census schedules of 1869.  The very last record in this collection is the following page for the county of Clarendon.

However, this is not the last image on this film; appropriately enough, this image concludes the record.

Although this is the last film currently in the U.S./Canada archive located in the Family History Library, in actuality, it is not the final film in existence.  There are many more films housed in the Granite Mountain Record Vault.  For example, film 2,453,845 is the Inventory, appraisement, and reports, v. 14 (from p. 50) – 16 (to p. 406), 1915–1920.  

As soon as a patron orders one of these films, it will be sent to the FHL and will then become the oldest film stored in that library in Salt Lake City.

Please note that both film number 000,000,001 and film number 2,453,276, or any of the more than 2 million films in between, can be:

• Viewed free of charge at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City
• Ordered for a nominal charge and sent to a Family History Center near you to be viewed for a period of 90 days (short term) to extended (no return date). Note that books cannot be ordered.
•  Requested for a lookup by Rootsonomy Genealogy either by sending an email to Rootsonomy.com or by going to http://www.facebook.com/RootsonomyGenealogy.  The first request is always free.