Posts in June 19, 2023

I’m searching for an immigrant to the United States named Johan Antoine Willi who was born around 1801 in Switzerland or possibly Germany. That ends up being quite a few search variants to use when querying nationwide databases. To keep myself in line and not miss anything, I’ve made myself a list of search options for those sites that use a “*” as a wildcard: Joh* Wil* born in Germany Joh* Wil* born in Switzerland Ant* Wil* born in Germany Ant* Wil* born in Switzerland The drawback is that this approach catches many names are are not close to Willi–such as Williams, Willems, Wilhelm, etc. I could choose to use a Soundex or sound-based variant option on the last name as well. The key is that I have […]