(click anywhere on this help window to make it disappear)
General Guidelines
You can search for individuals within Ancestral Forest to see if other members have details of people you are researching.
Enter the name you are looking for and submit your search. You must at least specify a surname
You can refine your search by specifying a forename, an approximate year of birth and a place of birth.
Forename
This is an optional field. Enter the forename you are looking for. Ancestral Forest will match any forename that starts with your chosen search string,
so if you are unsure of the spelling, fill in the leading characters you are confident of (e.g. for "Joe" or "Joseph", enter "Jo")
The downside of not providing an exact name is that you may have a large number of names returned, if you ar search for a common surname. If
abreviating the surname is returning too many results, try carrying out a differnet search for each spelling variant.
Surname
This is the only mandatory search field. Enter the exact surname you are searching for. ancestral forest will only return leaves that exactly match
this field. If you are not sure of the spelling, try carrying out a different search for each spelling variant.
Year of Birth
This is an optional field. Enter the year of birth to narrow your search. If you are unsure of the exact year of birth, select one of the ranges
(e.g. +/- 5 year).
Place of Birth
This is an optional field. Enter the place of birth to narrow your search. Ancestral Forest will return individuals that have a place of birth
that includes the place of birth you submit for the search. For example; a individual will be returned with a place of birth containing "St James Square, Kensington, London"
regardless of whether you search for "Kensingston", "James", "London" or even just "lond".
We recommend that you keep it simple - the more complicated you make your submitted place of birth, the less chance of a match.
Even if you are correct in your opinion that the individual was born in London, a matching result will only be returned if the owner has recorded
"London" as part of the Place of Birth. Therefore only enter place names you are confident about, or don't enter a place of birth at all!
Search Results
If you are member and are signed in, a list of up to 250 individual matches is returned, along with their year and place of birth and the user id of the
member that "owns" that individual. The results returned will not include any individuals from your own family trees. If more than 250 results are returned,
we recommend that you refine your search criteria and try again.
If you are not a member (or you are a member and not signed in), the search will return a count of the number of individuals that match your
search criteria, but not individual entries.
Whether or not you are signed in as a member, results do not include living individuals.
As a member, you are entitled to contact the owning member to see if the individual you have found is of interest to you. Click on the "Contact"
button for the relevant individual result. A window will open to allow you to enter and send you message.
Please note that the owning member is under no obligation to divulge details.
Further Help
For more detailed help, click the "User guide" option under "Help" within the Main Navigation Menu (members and guests only).