Searching for Places

Searching digital county histories, newspapers, and other items for ancestral names is usually on a genealogist’s to-do list.

Another item to search for in these items are place names from your family’s past–before they lived in the area on which the publications focus.

One of my Hancock County, Illinois, families originated in Coshocton County, Ohio. Searching for “coshocton” was a way to learn of other individuals who had that word mentioned in their biography, obituary, etc. A similar approach was done to locate references to Rush County, Indiana, for digital publications that focused on Macon County, Missouri.

Searches of this type can also be a way to find references to your ancestor (that also mention the location) when the digital rendering of the name is one that cannot be found by database query techniques.