Ancestry name range search - tips please?

[lisajk]

I have managed to locate my paternal grandmother and sent off for her birth certificate.  I am now trying to trace any record of her having been married, and don't understand why the ancestry search sometimes doesn't return images for every quarter of the relevant year.  I thought it might be that there are no records for that person's name in that particular quarter on the register, but it can't be that as some of the quarters it does give me to view don't have that surname either.  Can anyone explain, otherwise I am going to think I am missing some of the information I need to search?

Also a specific search on her name turns up her birth record but apparently nothing in marriage or death.  How accurate is this - can I be sure she neither married nor died, or do records slip through the net?

thank you
Lisa

[PB_Bear]

It may have been simpler to give the specific example ( of the surname you seek).

However re the indexing.

They have indexed ONLY the first and last surname on the page.

What you get are the pages where "your " surname lies  between the first and last names on those pages  (if it occurs at all)

PB

[lisajk]

Thanks, but that wasn't what I meant.  I obviously haven't made myself clear. 

If you search for a particular event (in this case a birth of someone with the surname Band) where you are not exactly sure of the birth year, you get a range of images for quarter years for the date range specified, which are the records for the pages on which the relevant name occurs - that I understand.  Sometimes these have occurrences of the name you seek, sometimes not.  For example sometimes you have births for Bancroft, then Band, then Bandy, but if no-one called Band was born in that particular quarter it jumps straight from Bancroft to Bandy.  So far so hoopy. 

What I am querying is that sometimes you get no records at all for a particular quarter, so for a given year you might get the Jan, April and October quarters but not the July quarter.  The obvious explanation would be that there were no Bands born in that quarter, but why then do many of the other quarters that are provided not have Bands in?   

Hope this makes more sense.  This and my second question previously posted basically make me question whether the search function is accurate or whether it sometimes makes errors, so you might miss some data.


Lisa

[Tati]

Their indexing is terrible and letters are often not recognized - the result page is completely independent of whether there is somebody with that name in that quarter or not.

Try this, posted by Jorose on another thread:

http://content.ancestry.co.uk/Browse/list.aspx?dbid=8964&path=

(for the quarters that didn't show automatically )

Tanja 

[PaulineJ]

Tanja has explained it well.

What you get is the 'place marker' for want of a better description of where "Band" BMD records should be listed alphabetically. It does not guarantee that any records for that particular surname (Band) are there.

Want to give an example of a 'missing' quarter (for your surname)?, and we can walk you through it.

Pauline

[lisajk]

Thanks!

Tanja - the link won't work for some reason, could you tell me where it is and I'll look it up directly? thanks.

The Band example was just the first place I started, there are many others.  For example I am now looking for a Graham Curtis born 1944 +/- 2 years.  If you enter this into the search you get nothing for the first or final quarters of 1944.  There may be no Graham Curtises in these quarters, but there will certainly be Curtises, and there are no Graham Curtises in the first quarter of 1945 either but it still brings this quarter up for checking. 

As an aside, once I had my grandmother's full name, with the help I've had from yourselves and others it only took me a day to discover that after my dad she had at least one further child, a daughter  - i.e. my dad's half sister - who had three children of her own, all a similar age to me.  I now have a whole branch of the family I have found in Devon that we had no clue existed.  The next step is the tricky one - to verify that they are who I think they are (though I am pretty sure I am right from the records I have seen), to locate them and then to contact them.   But I am at least now in a position where I can post a concrete request on the Devon site.  I can't tell you how grateful I am - I know I've been very lucky with the ease with which I have found them but it would have taken me so much longer without the help I have had.   

Lisa

[Tati]

the link won't work for some reason, could you tell me where it is and I'll look it up directly? thanks.

That's a shame. I hoped it would work. It takes you to the place where you can choose year and quarter without a surname. Haven't been able to find my way there by any other means.

Tanja 

[bwgan ceredig]

Don't know if this adds much, but there are a lot of errors  , and even some pages missing .   The way it is done you should get 4 quarters for every year.  Beacause by using the first and last name on a page the database can't know that a name that should be between arange isn't...if you get my meaning.   I have tracked some missing quarters by getting a name near to what I went and then using the next and previous buttons.

So for example I have been searching STIFF...if I get a nil return then I try just STI, or STO or even just S in some extreme cases...and be warned according to the index in some quarters NOONE with a surname beginning with S got married  Like I said though, even using this method I have found that pages just aren't there - so there is a gap ....That said, I have found some great stuff and RCers are nothing if not patient...and resilient, ...and determined etc  

I hope some of this makes sense...that all of it should make sense is too much to hope.

Julie

[Sisterjane]

Unless I have got this completly wrong and ive no doubt someone will tell me but...........I thought that at the moment Ancestry BMDs records only go up to about 1911 

Joe