by AndrewA » Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:07 pm
Personally I prefer Ancestry, I know a lot of people get put off becuase of exactly the same problems you are experiencing. Its a fallacy to think that you just enter a name and date and you get it!
did you see my thread on "candidate for the worst transcription page?" There could be many reasons why a record is not found, by the time data gets online it could have been copied numerous times, each time mistake being possilbe.
Another useful thing to use are wildcards. use a ? for any letter or * for any string of letters, so for someone called William whos name is easily mis-spelt or variants of, us something like Wi*m or if transcribers are continuing miss-spelling a family surname , such as Hayes as Hages, then just use ? Ha?es etc
Hit a Brickwall? Have you lost all trace of someone? Do not despair, simply make a note they were abducted by aliens! Don't believe in aliens? No problem, just write them off as having disapeared in a time portal