ANCESTRY yet again!

[O1dgobbo]

Hi Mort

Using your URL I get a search form that is superficially "new search" i.e. there is no box for entering a census reference number but all the little boxes that you could tick for exact data have disappeared on my computer.

I tried logging off and logging on just to be told that somebody else was using my username and that I should go away for thirty minutes, wwhich I did and then got back in but no "new search" as I remember it.  So I am not sure that logging off brings any real benefit for me.

All the best

Gobbo

[shan42]

I hadn't used Ancestry since December, until last night. It's still giving me the new search thingy when the census page loads, which I change to the old one. It seemed no different and I had no problems - I plan to do alot more over the next couple of weeks so hopefully it'll be fine.

[O1dgobbo]

Hi All

I think that with Mort's help I have sorted myself out.

If you click the search button on the grey menu line near the top you will get a "Search Historical Records" page.  On this page just below the right hand end of the grey menu bar there will be some tiny print underlined saying "Old Search" if your default search type is new search and "New Search" if yor default search type is old search.

If  you wish to search a specific UK census you will be given a screen appropriate to your default search and the option to swap between search types is omitted.  So if you are intending to change search types you need to make the change before calling up the form for a specific UK census.

If you are using new search and attempt to search a specific census you may be offered a search form that does not show the "exact" boxes for all the bits of data.  If you look at the brown bar at the top of the search form you will see "Show Advanced" and if you click this the missing "exact" boxes will magically reappear.  Ancestry should then remember that you like these little boxes and offer them on all your search forms and not just the specific census.  They will stay with you until you deliberately or accidentally click "Hide Advanced" on a search form when they will disappear.

I used to do the little puzzles in the newspaper but now I have a computer and a subscription to Ancestry.

All the best and sorry for being so unobservant

Gobbo

[FosseWay]

I may be missing something, but I have one fundamental problem with the 'new search' which makes me continue to use the old one, and it has to do with placenames for place of birth.

It appears that you have to choose a place (country, county/state or town/village) from the drop-down menu and that if you go your own sweet way and type something in that isn't in the list, you'll get no search results. This was brought home to me especially because I happened to be searching for two particular problem locations at the time. One was Church Lawton in Cheshire. This is variously transcribed in full, or just Lawton, or Ch. Lawton. Only the full version appears in the menu, so only examples where the enumerator wrote the full name appear in the search results -- a very small proportion. If you enter either abbreviated form you get nothing, so you're reduced to searching the whole of Cheshire.

The other related to Waterfall, Staffordshire. This village is indisputably in Staffordshire but as it's in Ashbourne registration district, enumerators sometimes write 'Derbyshire'. But there's no way to search for 'Waterfall, Derbyshire', and because county and town are no longer separate, you can't just search for 'Waterfall'.

These problems all stem from genuine readings of what the enumerator clearly wrote -- I won't even go into the problems associated with mangled transcriptions or illegible writing. I'd also suggest that it's quicker to type in a placename and tab straight on to the next field than type the first few letters, then have to move your hand to the mouse to select the correct option from the menu, and then return to the keyboard to continue.

I'm at a loss to see how Ancestry think this is better than what went before. 

[Nick29]

Well, I think I know what you mean, for instance, if I was searching for someone born in Essex, I would have previously put "Essex, England", but the drop-down offers "Essex County, England, United Kingdom", which is not what I would have put.  I'm afraid that this is an example of a combination of American ignorance of European geography, and Ancestry pandering to the majority audience, and that isn't us in England, United Kingdom !     Not much we can do, I think ? 

[FosseWay]

Nick29 -- I'm not that fussed about having to select 'Essex County, England, United Kingdom', although as I mentioned it takes more effort to do that with the mouse than just typing 'Essex'. My problems are (a) that you can't now search for town/village names independently of the county, producing my Waterfall problem above, and (b) that there isn't a free text option to pull up all the place names that aren't in Ancestry's list for whatever reason, producing my Church Lawton problem.

To redress the balance, FindMyPast has a similar issue to the first of these problems. In the 1911 census it steadfastly insists that Waterfall is in Derbyshire even though the address on the actual forms clearly says Staffordshire!

[O1dgobbo]

Hi

I found old search frustrating because it throws up enormous lists of possibles based on surname similarities and seems largely to ignore the other search data such as family members, dates of birth, and where lived etc.  New search allows me to enter data that I am certain about as exact and this should greatly reduce the list of possible results.

When entering a place of birth or area of residence you do not need to accept the drop-down suggestions - just ignore them and keep on typing to put in what you think is the best search term - ie Waterfall without a county.

Searching for Church Lawton did reveal a flaw in new search - it seems to pick up "Church" and then ignores "Lawton" so in the results you get people from Church anything including just Church, which is not really good enough.

In addition if you have a few "exact" parameters new search seems to forget that some are exact.  For example, if you search the 1901 UK census collection for Albert born in 1864 in Scotland and living in West Hartlepool (with each bit of data set to exact) you get a list of eight responses, seven of whom live in places such as Greenock West, West Lothian, etc.  But what I found really odd - five of them were not named Albert.  However, having said all that it is only fair to say that I set the test based on data I already knew for an Albert Jackson and he did turn up at the very top of the list.

As I said in an earlier post new search allowed me to search for a missing family using just Christian names and I found my missing Drawbridges recorded by Ancestry as Lrawbridge so I shall continue using new search but perhaps with not quite as much confidence in its logic as before.

All the best

Gobbo

[FosseWay]

Hi Gobbo

I wonder whether the new search has been tweaked since I last used it in that case, as I was fairly certain after numerous searches (not just involving Waterfall or Church Lawton) that it wasn't pulling up results that I knew should be there. I may be moved to give it another go in that case.

I've never had the problem you describe with the old search, though. I always search with the exact match box ticked, and introduce my own tailored degrees of uncertainty with wildcards and +/- on ages. Generally I've successfully searched on first names only where I've known a precise place of birth, providing this isn't somewhere huge like Manchester coupled with a very common name.

[O1dgobbo]

Hi

I must confess that I was never very successful using old search with the exact box ticked so I almost always left it unticked.  In that state it was amazing how often the target turned up on the second or third page despite being to my mind a much better match to the search criteria than the preceding 20 - 40 results.

All the best

Gobbo