1880 Census searching by father or mother's birthplace

Andrew Oler

Hi,

I've noticed that searching by father or mother birthplace in the 1880 US Census is not working. There are a few related issues with this I've noticed.

1. When I type a place name, the field doesn't attempt to standardize the place -- it leaves whatever you have as free text.
2. When I require an exact match, no results are returned, even though I know there are entries with this location. I've tried standard ways of spelling out the place (i.e., the same way the results are returned, e.g., "South Carolina" or "South Carolina, United States") to no avail.
3. When I uncheck the requirement for an exact match, the results are not prioritized based on the father's birthplace. For example, in one query, I searched for last name "Ewing" (not exact) with father's birthplace of "South Carolina" (not exact). 101 results are returned and the top hit has father's birthplace as empty.
4. When I export the results, the father or mother birthplace are not included as columns so I can't filter using Excel either.

This would be a great feature if it were supported, especially for tracing ancestry across the ocean. It seems like it needs some work before it can work properly.

Thanks!

Andrew