Emilie and all:

There is a way to search in the IGI for mother's name only by using wildcards. You must enter the father's full name in order to do a parent search (leaving the child's name empty). But you can do a regular person search entering wildcards for the child's name (% - percentage sign) or doing a parent search entering wild cards for the father's name.

Probably because of the way the database is indexed (and thus the restrictions on the searches)... doing wildcards is not very efficient and often times out the server and gives you an error. However, if you know a batch number it works like a charm. Also if you have a small date range (4 or 10 years) within one state it also tends to work...

Try it out. That is how I have found many an individual whose name was misspelled or who was missing a father, etc.

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From: meef98367
Date: Fri Mar 10 21:11:57 CST 2006
To: research@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] The IGI & Padre No Conocido

I don't know if this is appropriate to address to those planning to go to Salt Lake City in October, but I have a question about the way the IGI works as far as finding the children of women where in the record it says hijo natural or padre no conocido. Maybe someone at the main FHC or Mr. Ryskamp can answer the question.

I recently had help from Arturo on finding the birth record of an ancestor of my husband's and the birth records of the ancestor's parents. I asked him how he found the record so quickly, and he said he had just lucked out on the IGI query. (I never found it after years of looking). So, I thought well, maybe I will luck out today and find this ancestor's son. I got nowhere again on the IGI like had happened for years on this person. So I went back to my old way of going through thousands of people with that surname, and lo and behold, I did luck out. I found him listed with only one surname.

I found that the son had been born three years before the marriage of the people the son had listed as his parents in the baptism records of his children. His baptism record on the IGI only showed the name of his mother, no father listed. The IGI does not allow a search of parents unless you enter both parents' names, or at least the father's whole name and the first name of the mother. I wish that the IGI would allow a search with only the mother's name, since occasionally a woman will have a child out of wedlock and the father is listed as unknown. My question is: Is there any chance that the IGI will ever allow a query using just the mother's name?

Emilie Garcia
Port Orchard, WA ---