Mother & Father Last Name Searches

StephenDespot

Mother and father last name searches are not working in any locations. These are locations that have known names in them and no matter what you put in that field it populates no results and that's for any area or town you pick. You can do a couple letters with the wildcard search and still nothing. That's kind of a problem!

John Batzko

Same issue for me, I tried using a father's last name of Pet* in a village that has dozens of people with the surname Petrik that I have been searching for years. Something is definitely broken.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/results?q.anyDate.from=1780&q.anyDate.to=1820&q.anyPlace=Prusk%C3%A9%2C%20Ilava%2C%20Slovakia&q.anyPlace.exact=on&q.fatherSurname=pet%2A

Alan E. Brown

I'm not sure exactly what kind of search you are doing, but I tried to do a record search as you described, and I got plenty of results.

Here's the record search: Father=Smith, Mother=Jones, Location=England.

You can click on that link to do the exact search I did.

So then I thought maybe you were doing a search for people in Family Tree. Again with similar parameters, here's the person search: Father=Smith, Mother=Jones, Location=England

That yields millions of results.

Could you share the URL for the exact search you are doing?

StephenDespot

Pull up a town and do a search for names in a place you've already done research in with information you know for a fact exists Try doing a search with last names in the mom and dad fields. It's not working for me like it used to. Also do it with a wildcard search with a couple known letters and "*". That's how I pull up a bunch of results within a town and narrow it down within a sepcific family and not get a bunch of others. I rarely ever spell out the name in full because that doesn't bring up potential spelling errors if any exist so I normally put in the first two or three most common letters with the wildcard and go. You can tighten it up by adding the same idea in the first name field. It's clearly not working in any place I have ever done research in all of a sudden. Needs to be fixed.

StephenDespot

Here is a URL of one I just did real quick to prove a point and this one is a very generic search field put together in a town where you should yield a lot of results off this one entry alone and I know this for a fact because this is one of my main research areas and I know the families there. As you can see, only one result and not even that town. This is not good. If you back it up one letter you get a couple results from there but you should see a whole slew of them and many of which should be in the tree because I put them there.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/results?count=100&q.anyDate.from=1725&q.anyDate.to=1825&q.anyPlace=Star%C3%BD%20Tekov%2C%20Levice%2C%20Slovakia&q.fatherGivenName=joa%2A&q.fatherSurname=kug%2A

Gábor8300

I can confirm this issue exists, I came here to report the same problem.

StephenDespot

Looks like it's still not working. This isn't good. I tried going into a specific catalog to do the same and maybe narrow it down some and it doesn't work that way either.

Alan E. Brown

It seems to be a problem specifically with wildcard searches. A short-term workaround might be to avoid wildcards if you can.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

I just performed several searches for births in New Jersey, using a wildcard in the father's surname, and all worked as expected. The search returned the expected records for my GF and his younger brother, plus 3 children with similarly spelled surnames.

StephenDespot

Áine Ní Donnghaile

- not working for me still.

StephenDespot

Alan E. Brown

• first name wildcards work. It's the last names that aren't.

StephenDespot

John Batzko

• I agree. Something definitely not working the way it should be.