Michael Mansfield, a product manager at FamilySearch and a database expert, spoke at the BYU Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy 
on March 14. He listed a number of things that the researcher should do do locate your ancestor within databases.
Mansfield presented nine ways to “try harder” and “try smarter” to free up the power of database searches to find elusive ancestors.
Simply put, they are:
- Use variants of given names.
- Use middle names.
- Use unique given names.
- Use variants of surnames.
- Watch for translations of surnames.
- Expand location searches.
- Use date range searches.
- Search at the database level.
- Use wildcards.
Get the details on how to use these techniques in the article by Michael De Groote in the March 24, 2009 edition of the Mormon Times.
