Refining search to Family name

[CaroleW]

Without more info about the particular person you are looking for - have you tried adding a bit more info such as a birthplace or wife/ child's name (eg). Peter Merchant born Timbuctoo or Peter Merchant married to ..........

[Lostris]

Looks like Peter's already done that

Carol

No indication of that in his OP .... just generic reference to searching .....

[trystan]

If you have a name you are searching for but you want to exclude results with something or other in then use the minus sign (-) to exclude that word.

So for example:

merchant -seaman 

(notice there is no gap/space in -seaman)

This would search for merchant but would exclude the results that also have seaman in them.

You could do the same with other temrs too.

So here is a Google search of RootsChat for Merchant, but excluding some words:

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=on&q=merchant+-navy+-seaman+-ship+site:rootschat.com

or

www.rootschat.com/links/01gxi

As you start spotting different occupations of merchants you could then start adding more words to exclude, such as -coal -wine and so on.

Trystan

[Ruskie]

That is useful to know. It's something I use elsewhere such as Ebay, but didn't think to use it on rootschat too.