Labs – Experimental Search

If you haven’t heard yet, FamilySearch’s new feature, Experimental Search, is available. Experimental Search will search every U.S. deed and probate record in the FamilySearch collection. While free to use, it does require one to be logged into a FamilySearch account.

To access this tool, go to familysearch.org/labs

Currently, the Experimental Search Feature is shown in the ‘Expand your search with Full Text’ graphic. Clicking on ‘Go to Experiment’ will open the search page.

While playing with this tool, I searched for Ozias Wells in the KEYWORD box. Note that I put quotes around Ozias Wells. This tells the computer that I want the two words next to each other. Without the quotes, the computer will work for the word Ozias and the word Wells in the same document. Thus, it could pull a record for someone with the name Ozias that discusses wells (as in a water well).

Of these 121 results, I can use the filters to narrow down the results.

Record Year

Record Type

Filter Place

If I click on United States of America, it reveals the various states where the records are found.

If I click on the state, it tells us counties where the records are found. This would allow me to narrow the results to a specific county.

Thus, In a matter of minutes, I found the will of John Kennedy that names his son-in-law, Ozias Wells along with two deeds involving Ozias Wells.

Another way to filter these results is by the collection.

If I put “Ozias Wells” in the NAME box instead of the Keyword box, I get 125 results. Theoretically, the number of results should be the same. Since the number is (currently) not the same, one would likely need to search both ways.

Since I’m still looking for a deed invovling a James Crawford for 50 acres of land on the Marrowbone, I thought I’d try this new search feature to see what I could find. I started by putting Crawford in the name box and Marrowbone in the Keyword box.

After filtering for just Kentucky, I still had a ton of result. Looking at some of those results revealed that the computer did an OR search. In other words, it looked for the word Crawford or the word Marrowbone. Since I want both words in the document, I changed the search and tried searching for the following: Crawford and Marrowbone. Unfortunately, this found even more records. I’m guessing it looked for the word Crawford OR the word And OR the word Marrowbone instead of both of the words Crawford and Marrowbone in one document. To get around this issue, I tried a search for the following: +Crawford +Marrowbone. The plus sign tells the computer that the word has to appear in the document. Thus, I told the computer that I want both words Crawford and Marrowbone in the same document.

The 14 records in Kentucky are for land on the Marrowbone with Crawford as one of the names in the document. Unfortunately, I think the deed I am looking for was likely recorded in a county where the courthouse burned. However, I will have to work thru these results before I can determine that this is a negative search.

While experimenting with this tool, I searched for “Nelson G. Crawford”, a third great grandfather.

While this pulled up 11 results, none of them are in Warren County, Indiana. In order to pull up any Indiana records, I had to search for Crawford instead of for Nelson Crawford.

Surprisingly, the search for CRAWFORD only pulled up 3 results for Warren County. In addition, these results only included wills. No land records were retrieved even though they are on the FamilySearch site. Since there are descendants of two James Crawford lines living in Warren County, Indiana since 1830, I expected more results.

While my searches for the Marrowbone land and Warren county records were a little disappointing, I did a search for William Nafus, fourth great grandfather.

Of these 14 results, without even reading the deed I’m fairly certain, the second one in Seneca county, Ohio is for my ancestor. But that first deed also looks interesting and I doubt I’d have ever looked in Montana for Nafus records.

Check out this powerful tool for yourself and see what you can find!