Can we Please search by month
I am currently searching Records in England. The 1939 register give the birthdate of the person being recorded. I have girls born to a family in 1911 but I don't know their married name. Can you imagine looking through the 1939 register for a Mary Elizabeth born 1905 when the only search option is the year? If you would allow us to search the month and day, I could easily narrow it down to the Mary Elizabeth I am looking for. Why do we index the day and month if we can't use them to search our ancestors?
Answers
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Are you searching on FindMyPast? The "Advanced Options" button gives you access to search by birthdate.
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I agree. It would be very useful to limit a search within a year, especially when you have fragmented or limited information on a person.
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Why do I have to go to Find My Past to get better search options?
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The records from the 1939 Register are shared by FindMyPast. They had a 3-year exclusive on the database before it was available anywhere else. Their search options will almost always be better. And, unless, I'm missing something, the 1939 Register is not searchable on FamilySearch.
The database landing page does not even show search options on FamilySearch:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/2836130
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Yes, please allow users to include month (and allow restriction of each date field individually with an "exact" checkmark) when also searching by year on any record that includes month, e.g., birth, marriage, death, censuses that include birth months, arrival / departure month for immigration / emigration records, etc. When one already knows the associated month of the event, It would narrow down results when searching and be more time efficient for users. One can always broaden one's search by unchecking "exact," removing month, using wildcards in names, etc.
A similar problem when searching records, for example, is that one can use an "exact" selection for place but not for year in death records, so pages upon pages of results appear that are not applicable. In searching for a known 1948 death, it returns 1954 deaths, etc. Please add an "exact" option for year / year range.
Thank you!
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As far as I know, the 1939 National Register Index is still available only at FamilySearch establishments. I used to visit a (then) FHC regularly until a few years ago, and have attached many sources from the collection to my relatives' profiles, which can still be read from home.
As this appears to be the only way of consulting the FamilySearch version of the index, you might as well search the Find My Past version itself (for free, whilst there), which - as already mentioned - has better search criteria and links to the actual images.
On the point of searching on a first name, unless the maiden name (surname) of a female is very common, I find I usually don't have too much difficulty with this problem. Go to the FreeBMD website and search for marriages - say from around 16 years after the female's birth and in the area / county you expect it would have taken place. True, there are often up to three males to choose from against each registration reference, but it doesn't usually take long to eliminate those who did not marry your relative. Just type Mary Elizabeth ——- (suspected surname of the spouse) into the search field and you should have a good chance of finding Mary Elizabeth and her family's whereabouts in 1939.
If you wish, you can provide your relative's maiden name and date / place of birth here and give an experienced researcher the chance of identifying her. Not always possible, of course - especially if she had moved hundreds of miles from her birthplace by 1939 - but I have had success myself at identifying female relatives' spouses / married names by using this strategy.
Finally, on the point you raise of searching by day and month, as already mentioned the rights of publication for these records were given to Find My Past, so it is that organisation that chooses what deatil other websites (like FamilySearch) can publish. As far as I know, FamilySearch has never been given permission to index this collection, so the "Why do we index the day and month if we can't use them to search our ancestors?" factor does not arise in this case.
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