While trying to find information on my 3rd great grandparents (James Jackson and Ellen Moore Johns), I came across the death certificate of their son, John Wylie Johns. I located this death certificate on FamilySearch.org. From their main page, I selected Search. Instead of entering in search terms, I scrolled to the bottom of the page and elected to search by browsing the records.
1. Select the United States.
2. Narrow down to the state in which you are interested – I chose Georgia.
3. From the list of records collections, select the collection you want to explore – I chose Georgia Deaths, 1914-1927.
4. From there, you can search by name – in my case, I searched James Johns.
5. James Johns shows up on the list as the father on a death certificate for his son John Wylie Johns.
Searching by this method helps to narrow down the information you retrieve, and is the way I prefer to search if I have an idea of the specific information I’m trying to find. In this particular case, I was looking for vital records, knew where the ancestor had lived at the time of his death and could narrow down my search results before even putting in the ancestor’s names. It really helps to return targeted search results and save you time while searching for your ancestors.