Using the advanced search facility

[mardler]

A correspondent and I were just swapping notes about fishmongers! Here's a good example of the power of the database.

You're looking for a person named Howes who was a fishmonger in Norfolk. Here's what you do:
- go to the front page
- click on Advanced Search
- in the top box type "howes" (no quotes here or below)
- in the place of birth box, type "norf"
- click the triangle or the text next to it under Other Search Criteria
- go down to Occupation and type in "fishm" and then hit the enter key or the Search button at the top of the page.

And you should get a nicely formatted table containing this info.
Last Name, Given Name(s) Born/Christened Person ID Tree
1 Howes, Daniel b. Abt May 1843Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk I22436ONS
2 Howes, George William b. 19 Sep 1844Town Green, Wymondham, Norfolk I128ONS
3 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
4 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
5 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
6 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
7 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
8 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
9 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
10 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
11 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
12 Howes, John b. Abt May 1823Wymondham, Norfolk I29887ONS
13 Howes, John b. Abt May 1850Wymondham, Norfolk I13767ONS
14 Howes, John b. Abt May 1850Wymondham, Norfolk I13767ONS
15 Howes, John b. Abt May 1850Wymondham, Norfolk I13767ONS
Obviously John Howes snr has the most occurrences but you can see that there are four different individuals to choose from.

Note you don't have to type out all words in full, just enough letters to be sure you get fishmongers and not fishermen.

Look especially at the search criteria for each factor, eg, if you're looking for a William Howes, there are over 1,500 of them. So make the search for all William Howeses born in a particular place within 10 years of a particular year, or even two years, or after a particular date, and so on.

Hope this helps. You can do things in TNG that other family history programs struggle to do.