About a year and a half ago, we were given a present as family historians – have you unwrapped it yet? Full-Text Search on the FamilySearch website (https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text) means a plenitude of unindexed record sets can now be interrogated to find mentions of our ancestors.
So what exactly is ‘Full-Text Search’?
FamilySearch is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transcribe records within their digitised microfilm collection. The AI can read handwriting as well as printed text and produce pretty good quality transcriptions. The accuracy does reduce as the records get older (but this is not unexpected as humans also find it harder to read old handwriting). The Full-Text Search feature searches these transcriptions for the words you have entered into the search fields. The biggest benefit is finding mention of people in records that would not be captured in the normally indexed fields (e.g. it will find beneficiaries in probate records, witnesses on marriages, family members in settlement examinations). It will not identify all entries of a name in the images but it is a game changer.
The search form gives you a number of fields: Keywords, Name, Place, Year (Range), Image Group Number (DGS). It also has a very useful guide to searching which is worth taking into account. Be wary when searching by place or year as it is relying on it being part of the record set description/title or the AI having detected that place or year as a place or year when interpreting the record. Due to this, put the place name into the Keyword field rather than the Place field. Using keyword also means you can search at a more detailed level (for instance, “Duke’s Farm” or “1 St Margaret’s Road”). When searching using the Name field, for instance “John Garfoot”, it will also find “Garfoot John” and “John J Garfoot”.
So what do you get in the search results?
The results are provided as a list and there are two ways of viewing it: Transcript mode featuring short extracts of the transcript with the search terms highlighted; and Fact View which extracts names, places and years detected by the AI and highlights your search terms. Toggle between the two views to find the one you prefer.
Depending on your search terms, you can get thousands of results. To slim these down, use the filters on the left-hand side. Keep clicking the arrows to expand the list (for instance clicking on 1800 then brings up 1800, 1810, 1820, etc or Australia brings up the individual states). Click the box(es) next to the items you want to include in the search. Some caution does need to be used – the date may be the date the record was created not the date the information pertains to. An example is a genealogy history book that was published in 1927 presenting information about a family in the 1600s will appear under the 1900s filter not the 1600s filter. For Place search field, this could be where the record was created rather than the place name the record mentions. For instance, the probate record for a father in England mentioning their son in Australia will be under the United Kingdom not Australia.
What do results look like in Full-Text Search?
So once you find a result that seems like it may pertain to your ancestor, click into the original image view. The default view is the ‘Transcript’ view which gives a copy of the transcript and your search terms highlighted on the original image. If you spot errors in the transcript, you can now use the pencil symbol to edit the transcript. Saving in this view allows you to save a PDF with the highlighted image and the transcript. The ‘Information’ view gives you the source information for the image (including a copyable source citation) and a clear image. Saving in this view allows you to save a clean JPG of the image but without any source information.
How to effectively search using Full-Text Search?
There are two approaches to searching: identifying a specific record that you are expecting to find or pot-luck where you search for a person but you are trying to find obscure records you may not even suspect they are mentioned in. Obviously the second option is better for more unusual names or combinations of names and places. However also consider searching with an occupation or a second name (maybe a sister or brother with a more unusual name) to make a more unique search. When searching in specific records, to find record sets that are included in Full-Text Search you can search in the Catalog then next to the camera symbol (that indicates its availability) if it is included then it shows a little document symbol with stars in the corner. Note that if the record set has a locked camera next to it, then it will not have the symbol whether it is in Full-Text Search or not so you have to be at an unlocked site (e.g. a FamilySearch Affilitiate Library) to see the symbol. If the symbol is there, click on it and it will take you to the search form but with the DGS number filled in. Use ‘Edit Search’ to add in your specific research parameters.
When I carry out searches, I record the date and location of search (e.g. home or Affiliate Library (noting the much higher number of results at the Affiliate Library)). I use a table to record the Search field terms used, any filters applied and the number of results. In a second table, I record all the relevant documents found with the title/description of document, the relevant information for my research question and the source citation details.
So how do I use the search?
Having found probate records, court records, naturalisation records and poor law records that have helped me smash my brickwalls, I regularly use Full-Text search.
I am working collaboratively on a project tracing a man around the world in the mid-1800s. Through DNA, we currently think that our mystery man spent time in Queensland (hence the interest for this blog) in the 1860s. His name is Francis RITCHIE however there is a chance he was going by a different name. He had previously served in the Indian Army and spent time in New South Wales before moving to Queensland. He has a link to the FIELDING and HALL families of Eagle Farm and Ipswich respectively. So there are a couple of things we are trying to establish: are there any RITCHIEs living in that area in the early 1860s; and a search for connections between the RITCHIE, FIELDING and HALL families in the Eagle Farm or Ipswich areas.
I started out by trying to identify if there were any Francis RITCHIEs in Queensland. I searched Name: “Francis Ritchie” with filter on Place>Queensland. This gave me 28 results. The majority of the results were in the 1900s and were not relevant. One interesting result was a card index of Immigrants into Queensland. By scrolling to the images at the start of the dataset, a description of the collection allowed me to work out that the reference numbers linked to items at the Queensland State Archive. Unfortunately, it showed that the Francis RITCHIE must have been on a boat arriving after 1886 and hence was not the person we were looking for. However, there was no evidence of a Francis RITCHIE in Queensland in the 1860s. Knowing from other searches that there is good coverage of directories and electoral rolls, if there was a Francis RITCHIE he was likely to be found. However, the absence of results is not proof when using Full-Text Search.
The next search was more targeted to identify any RITCHIEs in the Eagle Farm area. I searched Name: RITCHIE and Keyword: “Eagle Farm” then filtered Year>1800s (i.e. 1800-1899) plus Place>Queensland. This resulted in 17 results. The most relevant result was to a collection of newspaper cuttings that were in a record set called ‘Marlborough History Records 1852-1925’. It mentioned a RITCHIE who was a station hand on the Walloon Station. Ironically Walloon is nearer to Ipswich than Eagle Farm. From previous information about his time in New South Wales, being a station hand would seem appropriate. The next challenge was to find out who was living at Walloon. From searching for RITCHIE and Keyword: Walloon, a number of electoral rolls showed there was a George RITCHIE living at Walloon in the late 1860s/early 1870s. The electoral rolls do not appear to go earlier than 1867 so we cannot tell when he arrived in the area. Further research could now be carried out on George RITCHIE to see if he could be our mystery man. Noting other searches were also carried out, a definitive answer just from Full-Text Search has not yet appeared. However, the ease of searching multiple types of documents as well as finding mentions in unusual documents, means that Full-Text Search is unlocking lots of brickwalls, giving us clues for further research and allowing us to expand on our ancestors’ lives.
To learn more about Full-Text Search, this is a good video from RootsTech with more information: https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/familysearch-full-text-search-your-golden-path-to-ancestral-discovery as well as a free Legacy Family Tree Webinar at http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=9471 (note this is an Affiliate Link). Enjoy the discoveries you make with Full-Text Search.
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