Google Search
Thanks to digitisation of archival materials and the power of internet search tools, Google search can provide significant information on residents by giving links to material on the web, such as directories, books, newspaper articles, etc. Clicking on the link will take you to the digitised document.
However, to employ the power of website searches to full advantage it is helpful to understand some basic search skills.
Clearly if a name is unusual, searching is likely to bring results fairly easily. Unfortunately, as can be seen from this extract for Albany Street, most surnames will be relatively common and so tracking information about the relevant resident is likely to require perseverance. As an example, let us consider the process of a Google search for Dr J Mackintosh, Accoucheur who lived at 31 Albany Street from 1824 until 1838.
A simple search for Dr J Mackintosh brings up 1.2 million links! Clearly, it would be impossible to find any clues about our resident among that mass.
To focus the search down, one needs to include one or two relevant keywords. The more specific the keyword the better the chance of success. The Street Directory provides the information that our Dr Mackintosh’s profession was Accoucheur – at the time a term for an obstetrician or doctor of midwifery – and this is a useful keyword to add. Given a doctor will often be referred to simply as Dr Surname we will try with the search term Dr Mackintosh Accoucheur.
Although this still returns over 13,000 links, the first pages of links contain various mentions of a Dr Mackintosh from the correct period, and by reading through the relevant links, more information can be found. Where opening a link brings up a large document, you can use your webpage ‘Find’ facility. (in Chrome this is in top right corner). Type in the word or phrase you wish to find in the document – in this case Mackintosh - and all related mentions will be highlighted.
In this example, by a number of initial searches, we have discovered Mackintosh's Christian name was John. Thus we can now search for Dr John Mackintosh Accoucher Edinburgh.
When searching, it is useful to understand that the use of quotation marks can facilitate a more focused search. Placing quotation marks around two or more words or a phrase in a search is a valuable technique as this limits the search to that exact phrase, and the returned links will only be web pages which contain the same words in the same order as to what’s in the quotes. Using quotation marks is particularly relevant to searches for people as by combining the Christian name and Surname in quotation marks the search becomes more focused. So we could search "John Mackintosh" doctor Edinburgh
Even if you have found related material, it can still be useful to continue trying searches with differing keywords or phrases as this can sometimes find fresh material. Thus you might try Dr Mackintosh Midwifery Edinburgh, or Dr John Mackintosh Edinburgh. By lucky chance the latter brings up an obituary for a Dr John Mackintosh. But is this the correct John Mackintosh? It could be easy to jump to the conclusion that it is, but we need to be sure. Fortunately, the entry in the 1838 Street Directory for Number 31 changes to Mrs Dr Mackintosh and it is safe to assume that the Albany Street resident Dr J Mackintosh died around then which ties in with the date of the obituary. Thus we now have substantial useful background.
Using the quotation marks search facility, do a search for your specific address e.g. "31 Albany Street". This is likely to return many past property sale links, and other links of no interest, but it can be worth looking through all the pages as there may be links that do contain information that might be useful, such as an unrecorded lodger at the property.
A phrase in quotation marks can be used in conjunction with other search words e.g. "31 Albany Street" Mackintosh midwifery Edinburgh.
It is worth trying a variety of combined search terms as this may help you discover new information about an individual.
Some links that appear may not be available to search further - such as information on pay-for-genealogy sites such as Genes Reunited. These often are an extract from a newspaper. If you are able, read what you can and if it looks potentially helpful, note which newspaper it appears in and the date of publication as you may be able to find it in the Newspaper archive.
