Add "no father" parameter to search or filter
Hi everyone,
When looking for an ancestor who was born and baptized with a different name than the one he grew up with (foundling child, found at 6 months old) can be challenging since you know no names. There are 33 thousand search results for the parameters used, however there would probably be under a thousand if we could search for birth records that are "mother only", essentially, those who are born outside of marriage (almost all foundlings). This would be an amazing feature. Or perhaps a date filter where one could select a single month. And if not, why not just let us see all 33 thousand results? Currently the limit is always 4900 (49 pages of 100 results).
Comments
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@Bogdan75 That's already possible.
Here's a screenshot from a search for my great-aunt, Mary, as an example. Her father died young, and her mother remarried. She was sometimes enumerated in the census by her stepfather's surname. Mary was also known as Mamie, her nickname, and she married and was enumerated with her husband's surname.
All of those variations are in her profile, and a search can take all of those into account or I can eliminate any of them individually. Neither her father's name, her stepfather's name, or her mother's name is automatically included in the search. I can add any, all, or none of those to my search.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile, I think what the OP is asking for is the ability to search specifically for records where the 'father' field is empty. To the best of my knowledge, this is not currently possible, nor is there a good workaround, because of the way many indexes impose the husband's surname on the wife, often contrary to actual usage. (If the wife's surname field could be counted on to always be hers, not his, then one could search for children with a surname matching their mother's surname to get a list of probably-mostly-illegitimate births [modulo maiden names matching married names, of course].)
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My point - since the search doesn't include the father, unless we add him specifically, it doesn't matter if the field is filled or empty.
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It does matter, if what you're looking for specifically is entries where there is no father. Not specifying a father will match every entry, whether the field is empty or filled.
That is, searching for mother=Julia Smith, father not specified, will match baptisms with parents John Brown and Julia Smith, Michael Smith and Julia Smith, William Smith and Julia [no surname], etc. etc. If what I'm actually searching for is Julia's illegitimate children, then all of those results will be annoying junk to scroll through, obscuring the results I actually want.
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Yes, Julia understood it correctly. I'm looking for records that only have the mother, where the father field in the birth is blank only. If there was only some trick with an asterix or something, but I think FS has not introduced anything similar, although theoretically I guess it would not be such a strain on their data processing.
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