Using FamilySearch's Full Text Search
A full text search may find your relative named in an unexpected document.
Cynthia Boatright Raleigh has been interested in family history since she was twelve years old, and has written several mysteries with a genealogy twist. She also writes early American supernatural and true crime.
Even if you’ve been unable to locate records for someone in your family tree, it’s always worth the time to check Family Search’s Full Text Search. This is true not only because new records are often added, but because sometimes…we just don’t know what to look for. Especially if it’s a person for whom we have very little information in general or for a specific time of their life.
Full Text includes a wide range of document types: probate, wills, court cases, marriage records, land records and deeds, plus others. You do not have to specify the type of document you want unless you want to narrow it down.
For my experience, I’ll use the example of my paternal grandmother, Lydia Lillian Fields. Over the years, I’d learned through other documents that she was not the orphaned baby she’d described, that although her mother died when she was eight, she did indeed have a very large family in Alabama, including a brother, and that she ended up in Illinois by moving with her aunt and uncle. But there were still details I didn’t know. Why did she decide to move? When did she move? I had narrowed it down to a window of time, but had no documentation.
I decided to recheck Full Text one day. This time, I tried her stepfather’s name. There she was. She was listed as Liddie Terry. Her last name was Fields, but they used her stepfather’s surname, which wasn’t uncommon. This file was regarding the estate of Lydia’s maternal grandmother (Smith), who had died and left money and property, lots of it, to many heirs. Lydia was one of them.
This wasn’t a file I would have expected to find through a search for a widowered stepfather who was no longer “in the family.” But here it was. An official record was kept of who those heirs were (meaning their relevant parent), where they lived, and if they’d been contacted, how and when. Bless the clerk who recorded that Lydia no longer lived in Alabama, had gone to Illinois, but her specific address was unknown. I had a record of her in Alabama in July 1916 (her half-sister went missing), and now I had a record of her in Illinois in June 1917. Subsequent documents provided information about a financial Guardianship assigned to Lydia (and several other heirs) even though she was over the age of 18. Later documents described the division of the money.
I had searched for probate documents for Lydia’s mother, but I have found none. I don’t know who her father was. I couldn’t find any probate records for her grandfather, and I didn’t think to search on her grandmother’s name for probate.
My preconceived ideas can override things. I need to follow my own advice, advice I gave to a fellow DAR member, “Research someone else in or close to the family, like you know nothing at all about them.” That may be when the magic happens.
To go to this search, go to familysearch.org and sign in. In the top menu, select Search.
Then choose Full Text.
You’ll be given a search box where you can enter variables for the name, location, a range of dates, as well as a keyword box, which is helpful if you want to narrow it down to certain types of documents, but isn’t necessary to use for broader searches.
Call for Contributors
Why should we all have to learn the hard way? Please share what you’ve learned. Email me at YourFamilyQuest@gmail.com
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Great stuff, Cynthia!