Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Surname Search in FamilySearch Full-Text Search Will Collections

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1)  How many "Wills" for your grandparents' or great-grandparents' surnames are on the FamilySearch Full Text Search feature (see https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text)?  

2)  List the surnames and how many entries there are when you do an exact name search.  What does this tell you?  Have you found Wills for all of your ancestors with these names?

3)   Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status  post, on this post.

NOTE:  FamilySearch has been adding more data to the Wills collections.  Here's how I did mine:

*  On the Full-Text Search page (https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text), I put my "Seaver" surname in quotes (to make it exact).

*  I then used the "Record Type" filter to select "Legal Records."  

*  Then on the "Legal Records" filter, I selected "Wills" to show only the records in that category.

Here's mine:

*  SEAVER surname:  2,075 records.

*  HILDRETH surname: 7,006 records.

*  RICHMOND surname:  60,256 records.

*  WHITE surname:  386,694 records.

*  CARRINGER surname:  165 records.

*  SMITH surname:  639,228 records.

*  AUBLE surname:  322 records.  

*  KEMP surname:  14,143 records.

Of course, common names like WHITE and SMITH will have many more records, and WHITE is also a comon word.

This tells me that these Wills collections are growing.  The numbers four months ago were very low, and now they're much higher.  I think they will continue to grow.  I'm still trying to find Wills and other Probate records for my Seaver, Carringer and Auble surnames to add to my genealogical sketches.  

I also search using "first name last name" and "last name first name" for my ancestors, usually with an additional filter of "Place" and selecting a state and/or county name.  And for other record types, especially "Property Records."

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