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Judith Stark
Judith Stark ✭
April 29 edited April 30 in Search

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?

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Answers

  • Julia Szent-Györgyi
    Julia Szent-Györgyi ✭✭✭✭✭
    April 29

    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.

    1
  • Judith Stark
    Judith Stark ✭
    May 1

    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!

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