Searching in the old FamilySearch

[bob gillis]

A couple of month while searching for th name Reesman. I could not
find what I expected to find so I tried Riesman and Reisman. As I
Remember Reesman and Reisman returned the same people but Riesman
returned a different set of people. FS replied

> I have performed searches on the three variants of Reesman that you
> sent to us. I have found the following -1) for the 1880 Census data
> and for the Social Security data, these three names are in the name
> standard name group. At least, they all pull back the same number of
> names from a search. 2) For all of the other resource files in
> FamilySearch, these names are not in the same name group and don't
> return the same result set when searched.

Today in answer to a query about a Karl Pleitner another helper
found him in 1900 Census as Charles Plietner.

I tried both Pleitner and Plietner with no one in MD. I tried Carl
born 1844 in Germany and found him as Charles Platner. wife and
children agree with 1900 Census.

So my point is that the surname search on FS while quite good and
often much better that Soundex still needs imagination in the name
spelling.

The 1880 Census search is one on FS that allows a given name search
without a surname.

bob gillis

bob gillis <robert...@verizon.net>