JewishGen is an incredible collection of resources, especially the databases containing millions of indexed records--which has thousands of new records being added each month. But both because of how JewishGen's search engine works as well as how records are being indexed from (mostly) Eastern European languages to English, you may not be finding indexed records that are there and you would want to find. This post will discuss some different techniques that could help you find these records. And if you have additional techniques, please add them in the comments to help other readers!
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| JewishGen's Search Interface |
JewishGen is free to use, but without a donation to its General Fund (JewishGen does need to keep things up and running!) of $100/year, you're limited in terms of the number of fields that you can search at once--1 field in the country-specific databases, and 2 fields in the universal database. While most of the techniques I'm going to discuss will work within the free parameters, if you are researching very common names, being able to do a more tailored search will be helpful. And in any case, $100/year to support JewishGen is very reasonable given the unique data and resources that it provides.
- Use "Starts With." Often Slavic languages add suffixes to names (like -ova to the end of female names, or possessive forms, etc.), and those suffixes may have been indexed. In those cases, you may not find records that truly are your family, where a suffix's addition means that a straightforward JewishGen search won't find the record. As an example, if I search for "Surname Phonetically Like Tolchinetsky," the results don't include anything from "Ukraine Revision Lists, Group 2." But if I search for "Surname Starts With Tolchinets," I do find those records--which is for several women who are Tolchinetskova, the feminine form of Tolchinetsky. I'd also want to search for the surname starting with Tolch, Tulch, etc., to make sure that I'm not missing results. I probably would look for names starting with "Tolt," "Tolsh," "Tult" and "Tulsh" just in case.
- Use "Contains." The "contains" function is powerful. It is only available if you choose "Any field" from the first column--where you'd normally choose "Surname" or "Given Name," etc. One of my family names is Zubkis. The "bki" combination is not a relatively common one. I'd done all kinds of phonetic and "Starts With" searches. But when I did "Any Field Contains bki," I found a Zyubkis family listed in the "Tiraspol Uyezd Revision Lists" collection that I'd never seen before. I'd already found descendants of this family (where they're using the Zubkis spelling). But the 1858 revision list that I found in Tiraspol Uyezd helped me to connect those descendants to this branch of the family. Thing about parts of your surname that are less common--but likely to appear in various spellings of the surname--and use those to search.
- Think of Alternate Spellings. I've found Zubkis family members indexed by JewishGen as Zubkis, Zoubkis, Soubkis, Supkis, Zubkiss, Zibkis, Zubkes, Zyubkis, Zubkov, Subkov and more. These varied transcriptions will impact how (and if) I can find indexed records. Even though your branch may have consistently been (so far as you know) Zubkis, think about vowel substitutions, which consonants (or pairs of consonants &/or vowels) can be substituted for your expected spelling. And you might get (pleasantly) surprised.
- Think of Mistranscriptions. Humans wrote the original records, with varying levels of handwriting legibility. Humans are indexing these records, with differing levels of accuracy, often impacted by original handwriting, faded ink, and torn documents--and sometimes just typos. I was looking for a friend's Goldingur family on JewishGen, and I knew that the records existed (since I'd found them earlier looking through original record books, and supposedly those specific record sets had just been added to JewishGen), but I initially couldn't find them. It turns out that in one case, the family was indexed as GOLDINFAR and in another as GOLDINGDR. For the GOLDINFAR entry, the original handwriting does kind of look like it could be GOLDINFAR. For the GOLDINGDR entry, it seems to just have been a typo. But without doing multiple kinds of searches (I searched for "Starts with GOLDI" and "Starts with GOLDE"), these two entries would never have appeared in my search results.
- Add in Towns Names. Sometimes "Starts With" and "Contains" searches will yield way too many results. Searching by town name may eliminate some search results that you want (so use this judiciously), but it can help to make your result list more manageable. But remember to use "Starts With" and "Contains" here too--there are varying spellings for town names, and sometimes suffixes are added to town names as well!
- Remember Towns Names Changed. This is a sub-tip. Remember that many town names changed over time as borders changed or for other reasons. Use all known versions of the town name, or you may be missing records. Many lists with alternative town names can be found with searches at JewishGen's Communities Database.
- Add in District/Guberniya/Province Names. If I were to use the town where my Zubkis family emigrated from in the above hint, I'd have missed related Zubkis families in nearby (and not as nearby) towns. So instead of just restricting to town name, I often use "Any Field Contains" and then a partial (again, to address spelling alternatives and suffixes) version of the area. For my Zubkis family, I'd use "Any Field Contains Podol" to find records that mention Podolia Guberniya. For my Lefand family, I'd use "Any Field Contains Chern" to find records that mention Chernigov Guberniya." Not every record set mentions a district, but many do, and this is helpful to focused on records in the right geographic area (realizing that relatives may have crossed geographic borders, so this is just a start). And I might get results for a Pololsky or Cherny family, where there is also a Zubkis connection--but not in the intended geographic area.
- Remember Geographic Borders Changed. Similar to town names, geographic borders changed. Search for all geographic districts in which your area of interest was located, over all relevant time periods. Again, JewishGen's Communities Database can help.
- Check Back Periodically. JewishGen adds records often. If you don't find search results today, check back in a month. And another month. If there's no project covering your area of interest, see if you can help start up a project to get records indexed and available for everyone.
Please list other search tips below. Happy hunting!
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A feature I recently discovered: wildcards such as * and ? work with an "exact" search. This can be a very powerful search tool when properly used. (Note: this also works with JRI-P searches.) Wildcards do NOT work with "phonetically like" or "sounds like" searches, but do work with "exact" or "starts with" (although a final * works just like "starts with").
ReplyDeleteYes, a good one! And the "exact" part is important for this tip. Thank you!
DeleteAll this makes sense and I appreciate the list. What I don’t understand is why they take the simple easy to read excel sheets that transcribers prepare and put them is an unsortable and inflexible list.
ReplyDeleteI keep a copy of all of my spreadsheets I have submitted doing the first pass of transcription for Jewish Gen and it makes a great list that can easily be searched. When I look for the same information I know is there due to my efforts, it is either not found or in an unfriendly document style (vs a simple list)
If you've submitted transcribed records and don't see them on JewishGen (after a couple of months), please contact the Research Director for the area. There may have been an oversight, and they can ensure that the records are uploaded. It isn't immediate (and RDs are volunteers), so do make sure a couple of months have passed before you ping.
DeleteAs for the format, JewishGen is moving to a system that will be more flexibl, but in the past there were specific formats used for various types of record sets.
Your tips inspire me to repeat searches I haven't done in the past 6-12 months. TY for this informative and practical post!
ReplyDeleteOh, definitely repeat. SO much has been adding in the last 6 months, let alone 12!
DeleteLara - Thank you so much for all you do! Your work has brought so many treasured records to us. My husband’s family is from Munkacs.
ReplyDeleteThat's so wonderful to hear! Hopefully these hints will reveal even more records waiting to be found.
DeleteI keep a list of streets my family member lived on (example Socola) and type that into "any field" along with the city (example Iasi) and then I get lists of people with various last names. I know the street # so I scan results for that # (52) and nearby #s. I often find new surnames that are related to me or garbled same surnames. Many buildings seem to be multifamily residences and the families were often related. When one family moved out, another family member moved in. One more use for "any field" is to search by occupation. Occupations seem to run in the family... In my family, they were stone masons. I like to use "stone," along with "town" Iasi and leave out surname or given name and see what comes up. Another trick is to use what you have that is unique... In mine, many men have the unique (for that era) first name Ezra. I search for Ezra without a surname.
ReplyDeleteWow, your family had street addresses? :)
DeleteThe unique one is also a good one! I search for Gerszon, which is my Ezra-equivalent.
Search by archival reference. If you find one record that interests you, you can often find others with the same reference. Use the "any field contains" option and replace all non-alphanumeric characters with spaces. Thus if the citation is, say, KRA/I-106/2/3188, you would enter KRA I 106 2 3188 as the search term.
ReplyDeleteOh, I didn't realize the space part! I've put the various citation details in different fields, but this is even better.
DeleteOne thing to keep in mind is that sometimes records use the Hebrew and/or Yiddish names (and spelling variants), and other times they use the civil names. For example, my 2GGF Leopold Neumann (and obviously many spellings) was sometimes Lipot, sometimes Louis and I believe Leib. Another GGF was Adolph/Abraham. While there may not be a definitive 1:1 correspondence, it's worth trying various versions.
ReplyDeleteFor sure, assuming you know the variations used. The other day I found a guy who was Eizik/Isaac/Aizik on some records--and Michael on others. Same person.
DeleteI use the Any Field option with dates, and also use the map.
ReplyDeleteTo see all births in 1877 in Filipow, enter 1877 in Any Field and pick the Suwalki region and Record Type = births.
Then I look at the map and select the village Filipow.
You can also search on 188 to see all births in the 1880's
I love the any field option!
Delete