From: "Josephine Jeremiah" <[email protected]> > On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:58:28 +0100, <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > I have just posted to the GENBRIT list, in answer to a query, a > little tip I learnt quite a few years ago now when researching at > FreeBMD. Many listers may already be familiar with it, and I apologise to them > for being boring (!), but some newer listers and novices to family > history may not have discovered it yet, so I hope it may help them. > > Hi Roy, > > Thank you very much for this tip. Even people, like me, who have > been researching for years are likely to find it useful if they didn't know > about it before. > > I've searched on unusual first names only, but not on a surname as a > middle name. > > VEATER, the surname of some of my ancestors in the 18th and 19th > centuries, is one of the more unusual surnames in my tree. > > So I put *VEATER into the first name field and found a number of > names new to me in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Glamorgan plus one I > recognized as my great-grandfather's first cousin.> Very glad you found it useful, Josephine. -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Famous family trees blog: http://blog.findmypast.co.uk/tag/roy-stockdill/ "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE