From another site shared by Wyndell Taylor. The first one I know about and use. The other tips are new to me. Please post the goodies if this helps. ********* SEARCH ENGINE TIPS by Mike Jarvis As genealogists in today's high-tech world, the importance of using search engines properly is ever increasing. With genealogy related web sites making up a huge part of our World Wide Web, we would like to share some search engine tips that perhaps a few you will find helpful. There is much that could be written about this, but we will focus only on a few tips that we find most helpful. We use [ and ] to indicate terms that would be written in a search box. First - The use of quotation marks. When using a combination of words in the search box, the search engine results will include every web page where these words occur anywhere on that page regardless of whether these words are immediately next to each other. Using the search term of [family history] will result in 109,000,000 hits while ["family history"] within quotations will result in 5,400,000 hits. This is because in the second instance it is only finding pages were the words are actually next to or immediately touching each other. Try this with a family name. For example my grandmother is named Flora MacDonald. If I search [Flora McDonald] in Google it returns 251,000 hits. Putting ["Flora MacDonald"] in quotations results in 29,600 hits. This is far too many hits and primarily relate to a prominent woman in Scottish and American history. This is not my grandmother. However, knowing that my grandmothers middle name was Hermosa, it makes sense to put ["Flora Hermosa MacDonald"] in the search box and I get two hits related specifically to my grandmother. Success! Second - The use of the minus sign. This is my second favorite search tip. Using any combination of words in a search box with the minus sign directly next to a word that you DO NOT want to find is also helpful. Using the search term ["Flora MacDonald" -Scotland -Scottish -"North Carolina" -NC ] will eliminate any pages from my search that includes the words next to the minus sign. So I will get only those pages that have my grandmother's name and do not have Scotland or North Carolina on the site. This effectively reduces the number of sites by more than half, from 29,600 to 12,800 hits. Using quotation marks and the minus sign in combination greatly improves your search results. Third - The use of the plus sign. The plus sign has the effect of instructing the search engine to give special emphasis to any word where the plus sign is against it. My grandmother's father was Alexander MacDonald. However, not the Alexander MacDonald who was prime minister of Canada. Using the search term [Flora MacDonald -Scotland -Scottish -"North Carolina" -NC +"Alexander MacDonald" -Canada ] gives me 1 hit that directs me to a +site about my grandmother. Here we have combined quotation marks with the minus sign and the plus sign Fourth - The site search. Let's say that I would like to find Alexander MacDonald, however, I only want to search a particular domain. I would simply use the search phrase ["Alexander MacDonald" site:rootsweb.com ]. Rather than thousands of hits I get 204. Similarly, you could put a minus sign in front of rootsweb.com so that it searches all domains except Rootsweb. Fifth - The intitle search term. Suppose that you would like to find every site on the Web with the word genealogy in the title. The search box would need the term [intitle:genealogy], which would result in 943,000 hits. Similarly, use the term [intitle:genealogy -site:ancestry.com] and you eliminate 3000

Using one of these tips came back with something immediately near the top of the first page of results that I was struggling with for the last few days ... the location of Ebenezer Methodist Church in Habersham County, Georgia. Read about Ebenezer after the following (there's also an Ebenezer Baptist Church somewhere in the area). I used "ebenezer methodist"+habersham to find the location answer. ***** The village of Hollywood has never been incorporated as a town, nor has it ever been platted as a town. It is not known when the community adopted the name of Hollywood, but it is believed to be in the early twentieth century. It was first called Ebenezer, which is the name of the Methodist Church that was started in 1818, the same year that Habersham County was charted. A small school was subsequently built near the church and Ebenezer was the focal point of the area. There were very few houses in the area now occupied by Hollywood before 1840. Most of the early pioneers located along Deep Creek, Panther Creek and Glade Creek. They were mostly farmers whose main objective was to produce enough to sustain their families and have a little extra to sell or trade for those items needed that could not be produced on the farm. This was pretty much the story until the Tallulah Falls Railway came through the area in 1892. This opened up a source of income as the trains needed cross ties for tracks and wood to fuel their engines. The trains offered transportation for sending goods to the markets, which previously had been accomplished by wagons over the Unicoi Turnpike. The name of the new train station became known as "Ebenezer Station." About this time, several apple orchards were planted and a cannery was built near the train station. A grist mill was built, as was a small store. Heretofore, the residents in the area went to the flour mill and post office at the "Franklin/Walker Lime Kiln." In time past, it had been an Indian commissary, which is located approximately two miles from Hollywood on Davidson Creek. About 1920, a new schoolhouse was built across the road from the depot, which burned a few years later and was replaced shortly thereafter. There are very few homes of historical significance left standing in the Hollywood area. Hollywood is doing well in modern times, however. It has a grammar school, Hollywood Baptist Church, Ebenezer Methodist Church, convenience stores, new water and gas lines, a regulation golf course and many new homes and condominiums. It is an interesting and friendly neighborhood. Submitted by George T. Grant, Clarkesville http://www.tourhabersham.com/pages/citieshollywood.html I'll throw something out that has no immediate answer, but possibly some big clues to follow through with. I have the microfilm that Bobbie Jean loaned me in another lifetime that is the 1834 poor school records for Habersham County. There's 700 plus names. First, old Habersham in 1834 included what became White County and included a sliver of Lumpkin County. The list (pages) show no location of the schools which were probably "church locations." The given names and ages are fooling because there's no way to identify most of the kids (a number of Dover) because the daughters married before 1850 and the sons may have moved. That includes other surnames. Most of the Dover's have no clue "where" they were for location when a number of them left before 1840 and for sure 1850. Best chance is to stab at locations as a census reference but that has been almost impossible to do so far. Maybe Ebenezer Methodist Church in the Hollywood area might include the surnames in the church records for a comparison with known census, isolate a probable location for the kids listed together. I feel the pain coming on this task. I started the transcription many months ago. There's only 12 images (pages) but some are hard to read. The poor school records from the microfilm are not anywhere on the internet and I doubt that many researchers have ever seen them. Are there six people with Habersham roots that would be willing to transcribe two pages each? I would be happy to send any or all of the images to anyone who is interested in helping. It might go really fast that way. ***** Habersham County Ebenezer Methodist Church About the time Habersham County was organized in 1818, Ebenezer Methodist Church was built across the highway from the present location on land owned by the Mathews Estate. No records can be found of the building committee or of the date the first church was built, but the information has been handed down to the oldest citizens and church members that Mr. Mathews gave permission for the church to be built on his property and that it probably remained there about 70 years until the church purchased 8.5 acres from EDWARD N. IVESTER in 1892. This church was at one time in the Dahlonega Charge. It has also been in the Elberton Charge and Gainesville Charge. Many pastors have served the church staying anywhere from 1 to 9 years. A deed was made on May 18, 1892, between EDWARD N. IVESTER and the Trustees of Ebenezer Church. The Trustees were: A. C. INGLIS, J. T. Smith, G. A. Anderson, J. R. Anderson, and MOSES FRANKLIN. They purchased the church lot and graveyard for the sum of $27.00. The deed states: "This land to be held in Trust, that said premises shall be used, kept, maintained and disposed of as a place of Divine Worship of the Methodist Episcopal Church, subject to the Discipline, Usage, and Ministerial Appointments of said Church." The deed was recorded on July 19, 1892. The church was moved back from the highway around 1927 at the time the highway was paved. http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahabers/churches/ebenezermethodist.htm A. C. INGLIS could be Alexander Inglis or maybe his son, the elder being the father-in-law of Robert Short Dover son of Jarrett Nelson Dover and Matilda Goodson son of Johnson Dover and Hulda Cross son of Francis J. Dover. Moses Franklin had a daughter and son that married Dover's ... Nancy to Edward Parker Dover and George to Nancy Elizabeth Dover, both children of Jarrett Nelson Dover. Correct and clarify where I'm wrong on this. ***** The following is a great cemetery database for Banks, Habersham and White counties in Georgia ... much on Habersham where the majority of the known burial plots for Dover AND allied are located at Ebenezer Methodist Church in Habersham. Some dob/dod that I have never seen before. So far, lots of Davidson and Dooly are there. The database is very big. I downloaded the entire database into a Word document that is 715 pages long ... for searching key words (cemetery name) instead of surname groups off the web. Also married Dover daughters are identified. http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahaber2/cemdb/01.htm

Thank you Dennis for this wonderful information!! Marie