This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: NancyKiser Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.phillips/8131.1.2.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Sure, I am happy to explain. Fuzzy searches involve using what is called a "wildcard", among other techniques. On ancestry.com, the wildcard is an asterisk (*). It is a symbol that replaces letters. For example, the name Phillips is frequently spelled different ways by different people: Philips, Phillipps, Philipps, etc. So I always search for Phi*. This will pull up a lot of different spellings of Phillips. However, when you use this technique, it is a good idea to include other info to help weed out some of the hits, such as place or date of birth. It also helps if you limit your search to a specific county when you use the wild card technique. Of course, sometimes Phillips is spelled even more weirdly, like Fillips. So after trying Phi*, if I don't find who I am looking for, I may try searching only on his first name, especially if he had an unusual first name. You can once again use the wildcard to do this, but you have to use at least the first three letters of the person's name. When you search on a person's first name only, it is even more important to help limit your hits by adding the date and/or place of birth or just searching in a specific county. If you can't find the head of household, the next step is to try to find the name of the wife or one of the children, if you already know their names. Of course, this only works on the 1850 and later censuses, because before 1850 only the head of household was named. Also try putting in just the first initial of the person's first name, since sometimes the census taker did not spell out everyone's first name. However, sometimes the person who indexed the census simply missed a name or even a whole page. So sometimes you just have to go page by page to find who you are lookimg for. If you were able to find the person on the previous census, you might go back and look at who was living near him 10 years before, and then search for those names. People were much less mobile 200 or even 100 years ago than they are now. They tended to stay in the same places for a long time. Hope this helps. By the way, if you read the "Tips of Searching Ancestry.com", they tell you that ancestry automatically returns alternate spellings for any given name. However, I like using the wildcard method. Nancy Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.