> May I ask how one used the Keywords on Ancestry.com, how are they > used? I am new to all of this. Thank you, Valerie Valerie: Use the keyword to expand or narrow down the search to a particular county, city, unit of service, etc. level. It is a tool to examine data on a micro level if you use a narrowly focused key word (i.e., city), a little bit larger level (keyword of county) or a lot larger (no keyword at all). What I enter in the keyword depends on how common is the surname, how specifically do I want to search, and what are the possibilities for narrowing down the search based on how ancestry has set up the data fields. It is a handy tool for letting you look at all entries for a given surname in a narrow focus. For census records, I might start the search with full first and last name with the county as a keyword, if I get too many hits to check, (or don't find my ancestor at all) I might narrow down the search to only the surname with the county as the keyword, or the surname with the city as the keyword. It can be used as another way to look for those pesky first name misspellings and/or initials instead of names. You can also use only a surname with a county or city keyword to see who else with the same surname is living in the same city and/or county The same thing works for birth, death, military records, etc. Use keywords to expand and narrow your search based on whether you have too few or too many hits. For instance, you might try marriage reclrds with the county as the keyword, or the bride's surname as the keyword. You might look at the data in your original search, and then ask yourself how you would like to change to results you found............often there is a keyword in the data fields that you can put in the keyword field to help out. I hope this makes some sense; it would be much easier for me to show than to tell. Glee <gleemc@earthlink.net>