It’s the last weekend in July, so it’s also the final Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge for this month.

Randy Seaver’s topic this week uses one resource that I love:

1)  How many “Wills” for your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ surnames are on the FamilySearch Full Text Search feature (see https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text)?  

2)  List the surnames and how many entries there are when you do an exact name search.  What does this tell you?  Have you found Wills for all of your ancestors with these names?

First, none of my grandparents or great grandparents left wills that I’ve found online. I have copies of wills that my grandmothers and mother left.

I followed the same steps as Randy when accessing this collection.

As for the Full-Text Search, my results vary wildly between the paternal and maternal sides of my family because my father’s side was all Rusyn. Their surnames aren’t terribly common and few Rusyns left wills.

Kucharik – 0 (Kuchariks became the Sabos)
Sabo – 172
Scerbak – 1
Kacsenyak – 0
Murcko – 2

Adams – 112,101
Coleman – 56, 789
Stewart – 94,405 (Stewarts became the Stuarts)
Stuart – 30, 342
Jensen – 4,169 (Jensens became the Johnsons)
Johnson – 265,947

I have found wills using this collection and Full-Text search, but for generations further back and I’ve had some excellent finds.

If you haven’t yet tried it out (Land Deeds are also in the experimental collection), you are missing out on a terrific new AI tool.

As always, Randy, this was a great topic for a challenge.