Search by Principal

Judith Stark

Apologies if this is answered somewhere, but I can't find it.

I want to search on, for example, a baptism for John Smith.

How do I get John Smith to be the Principal, please? I don't want him as father to all the other possible name, just possible baptisms.

Anyone know how to to this?

Julia Szent-Györgyi

This has always required workarounds: FS has always "helpfully" searched for a name in all name fields, not just the principal person's name fields. The easiest way to get rid of those matches in this case is to filter by birth. Just a single level of either date or place will remove the results where the entered name is a parent or other non-principal person.

For example, if I put in just my great-grandmother's name, I get nearly nine thousand results, many of them entries where her name (or something vaguely like it) is a parent or spouse:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.givenName=Julianna&q.surname=Trnyik

If I click the gray "Birth" bubble above the results, choose Continental Europe, and click Apply, I reduce the list to a few hundred:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.givenName=Julianna&q.surname=Trnyik&c.birthLikePlace1=on&f.birthLikePlace0=5

The "pruned" list is not all births and baptisms, but they all feature the searched-for name (or something vaguely like it) as the principal person in the indexed event.

Judith Stark

Hi Julia,

Thanks for that. I'll give it a try.

Part of the problem for me is that, yes, I really am searching for John Smith, and, of course, there are quite a few of them!