Search
1. Name search
Searches the database for persons. Simply enter a name in one of the name, patronymic and/or family fields. You may use all 3 fields, two or only one. Wildcards may be used, see below. Use no surname prefixes when entering a family name. E.g., do not write 'van der Veen', but just 'Veen', not 'de Vries, just 'Vries'. You'll need to enter at least 3 characters, wildcards not counted, for a successfull search.
.2. Document search
Searches the documents database. This database holds document transcriptions, life descriptions etc. You may enter more then one search phrase with a minimal length of 3 characters. This function is particulary useful to find people that are mentioned in certificates, but are not included in the pedigree database. Example: Bosma Garijp finds only texts that contain both words. To find an exact phrase consisting of a number of words, write an underscore between the words, example: Jan_van_der_Laan.
3. Wildcards
You can use 2 types of wildcards. '*' replaces one or a number of characters in the searchphrase, while '?' replaces only one character. A few examples; Mart?n returns Marten and Martin, while W*be returns Wybe, Wijbe, Wiebe and Wobbe. ?eenstra returns Veenstra and Feenstra, etc.
4. Patronymics
A patronymic denotes the fathers name, as in son of daughter of (...). In general, the patronymic is the fathers name with an 's' attached to the end. E.g. when Jan is a son of Egbert, his patronymic will be 'Egberts'. Exception are names that are ending with an 's', e.g. Johannes, these don't get an additional 's'. In the database every person has a patronymic added to his or her name. This enables you to find all the children of a person. Using the before example, leave the NAME field blanc, enter 'Egberts' in the patronymic field, enter a family name and press search. All people in that family, who are a child of 'Egbert', will be listed.
5. Search results
The results, if any, are a list of names, arranged by family name and date of birth. Each line links to a page containing genealogical information about that person. After a document search, searchphrases will be highlighted in the text.