Hasn't this family search stuff been an vital activity for LDS for 180 years?

Woody Brison

I search the Tree for a friend, Gus McCauley, who lived in Orange county, California in 1971. Why would the search function fish up, first, a Gus McCauley who died in 1922???

Paul W

Maybe you got that result as there appear to be only two Guy McCauley individuals that anyone has entered to Family Tree:

You could try searching for variants of that name: otherwise, a new profile needs to be created (by you or your friend) based on known facts and records you have relating to him.

Regarding records, in an "Exact (name)" search, I found only those listed here on FamilySearch:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/results?q.givenName=gus&q.givenName.exact=on&q.surname=mccauley&q.surname.exact=on

There are obviously millions of individuals whose names are yet to be added to Family Tree, in spite of how long Church members (and more recently others) have been carrying out this work (180 years, you suggest).

One final thought: might this particular Gus McCauley still be alive? If so, and he has a "Living" status assigned in the Tree, for privacy reasons only the individual who created his profile would be able to view the detail. So, a separate profile would still need to be created by you / your friend, which can then be linked to any deceased parents that might have been added already.