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Not sure where to add this so a Mod may want to move it elsewhere.
I saw this on a Rootsweb list and Roy Stockdill has kindly given permission for me to pass it on.
I imagine quite a lot of listers will already know this but on the off-chance that not everyone does, here's a useful little tip for when you are searching at the FreeBMD website for the entries of births, marriages and deaths of relatives, etc. This is particularly useful for those running one-name studies but it can also work for ordinary family historians if they want to identify possible relatives with an unusual surname where it was used as a middle name, i.e. possibly the name of a mother or grandparent, etc.
If you enter nothing at all in the surname field but enter in the first name field a surname with a + sign in front of it, this produces entries in which the name was used either as a forename or a middle name. To give you an example.....
Entering just "Stockdill" in the first name field produces only ONE
entry, for a child called Stockdill Middlebrook registered in 1896 at
Dewsbury.
But if I enter "+Stockdill" in the first name field, nothing in the surname field and choose All Types, this produces NINE other entries for births, marriages and deaths where Stockdill was given as a middle name. I can then identify all of these as being either relatives of mine or linked to my one-name study.
Remember, it's important to put the plus sign before the name and the
more unusual the surname the better the chance you have of finding the
entries. Looking for people with Smith as a middle name will not be
very helpful!
I saw this on a Rootsweb list and Roy Stockdill has kindly given permission for me to pass it on.
I imagine quite a lot of listers will already know this but on the off-chance that not everyone does, here's a useful little tip for when you are searching at the FreeBMD website for the entries of births, marriages and deaths of relatives, etc. This is particularly useful for those running one-name studies but it can also work for ordinary family historians if they want to identify possible relatives with an unusual surname where it was used as a middle name, i.e. possibly the name of a mother or grandparent, etc.
If you enter nothing at all in the surname field but enter in the first name field a surname with a + sign in front of it, this produces entries in which the name was used either as a forename or a middle name. To give you an example.....
Entering just "Stockdill" in the first name field produces only ONE
entry, for a child called Stockdill Middlebrook registered in 1896 at
Dewsbury.
But if I enter "+Stockdill" in the first name field, nothing in the surname field and choose All Types, this produces NINE other entries for births, marriages and deaths where Stockdill was given as a middle name. I can then identify all of these as being either relatives of mine or linked to my one-name study.
Remember, it's important to put the plus sign before the name and the
more unusual the surname the better the chance you have of finding the
entries. Looking for people with Smith as a middle name will not be
very helpful!
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