TheGenealogist's SmartSearch and Death Records

TheGenealogist has just added another 14 million death transcripts to its database (now 26 million death records from 1960-2005), and you can use the website's amazing SmartSearch facility to explore your ancestors' records quickly and easily back through the generations. 

Here's an example courtesy of TheGenealogist team: the tragically early death in 1977 of  legendary T-Rex guitarist and vocalist, Marc Bolan, who died when he was only 29.  Marc's real name was Mark Feld, and we can use this to search the death records (above).

The ‘SmartSearch’ facility on theGenealogist allows us to jump straight to his birth record, which then links to his parents and potential siblings.  I am told that Mark didn’t have a brother or sister (although see comment below) but we can find full details of his parents Simeon and Phyllis, including their marriage record (left) which allows us to move onto the next stage of the family tree.

By Christmas, the team hope to have transcribed the death records back to 1930 giving even more access to data for the family historian.
Are these wonderful new ways of searching the records a blessing? They could potentially save you hours of wasted time and pots of money. Or do you prefer the thrill of finding out the links of your family tree by yourself? I'd love to know what you think!

All images supplied courtesy of TheGenealogist.

The Genealogist’s New All-in-One Search

Great news for family historians! TheGenealogist.co.uk has launched a brand new all-in-one search feature, which allows users to do a ‘single search’ across the website. The new all-in-one interface also incorporates the unique and powerful ‘keyword’ search. This is the first time that these two features have been brought together to aid research.

Now you can enter an ancestor's name along with an approximate year of birth and the option of keywords to trace their life through the records, from birth to census, marriage and more. ‘Address Lists’ are also included so you can view other residents and any other potential family links.

Mark Bayley, Head of the Online Division at TheGenealogist, feels the new search facility is an exciting new development:

‘Customers will get a much deeper insight into their ancestors in a fraction of the time. They’ll be able to find everything we know about someone almost instantly with a single linked master search'.

'This is a powerful tool not currently available elsewhere. TheGenealogist is all about user-friendly searches, not just records and this new feature further enhances what we offer… it’s now quicker and easier than ever with our new All-In-One Search’.

On the left are some sample results for an all-in-one search for ‘Gideon Tucker’ plus ‘Shaftesbury’, © theGenealogist, so you can see the type of results available – over half of century of his life is revealed.

I searched for one of my ancestors, Samuel Pickvance, and got some very interesting census results straightaway.