Yesterday evening after the kids went to sleep, I was casually fooling around on FamilySearch.org, trying to find any records from Poland regarding my great-grandparents. I didn't intend to spend much time on it; I was just killing some time before my own bedtime. I didn't find any Polish records, but I did FINALLY find my great-grandfather and his family in the 1930 U.S. Census. I had made several earnest attempts over the past year and a half to find it, with no success. Their last name of 'Kowalski' was transcribed as 'Koralski,' and Ancestry.com had listed 'Korchske' as an alternate possibility, which, of course, was WAY off. I suppose this was the first time I had used the FamilySearch search engine on this name, and it obviously did a better job of pulling up close matches than the Ancestry search engine did so many times before. It was nice to be able to add a 'missing piece' to one of my family binders before going to sleep.
Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio; Roll: 1770; Page: 17B; Enumeration District: 227; Image: 285.0; FHL microfilm: 2341504. Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.
If you use both FamilySearch and Ancestry regularly, do you find that one search engine performs better than the other for particular situations/topics? I am curious of other peoples' opinions. :)
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
