oh my gosh you guys oh my gosh bingo I have been searching for a census record for one of my ancestors for a very long time and I finally found it I am going to walk you through the process of how I did it there was actually three different strategies that I used to kind of tease out what I was looking for and so let's jump into that right now okay so let me tell you this story I got to give you some background first because what I was looking for in this ancestor let me zoom in so you can see that Nanny Watson Winslow I was looking for her in an 1880 census and she was missing it she's been missing for a while and you know she was born in 1874 so she should have been there so I'm going to show you how I did that Nanny here she was born in 1874 and she was born to hilaya Winslow and Mary C hail okay I'm just giving you some background but as you can see here since she was born in 1874 she should have been in the 1880 census I have all of the other Census records for her during her lifetime but I don't have the 1880 census it was driving me crazy I have gone back to this this is the only thing that I hadn't finished on this ancestor was finding that census record and I had come back multiple times times to see if I could find her and I couldn't so let me walk you through the process of what I did to find her so the normal search from this profile to find her in the records did not work okay just wasn't showing up so then my other trick is to go to the card catalog and a lot of you have probably seen this before so you can go to Census records and let's scroll down to the United States and let me pull this up full all right so then what we want to do is go into the 1880s I'm going to sort by record count and there's the 1880 census okay so if I click into that I could search for her from here but that's not what I did because I've done this before and it it didn't work what I did was I used this browse collection over here let me scroll in a little bit so what I did was I went to North Carolina right Bing Randolph County and her parents were in Back Creek in the township of Back Creek now one of the reasons why you want to use this side panel this browse The Collection side panel is because you can see the different townships in this area okay so here's the thing check this out so by doing this you get the enumeration disc down here with a hyperlink it takes you straight to the role let's do that so here I am in the rooll and if you here's another little trick let me just zoom in we're on image number one right now it doesn't really matter what image we're on if I click into the index and I pull this up and I just pick anybody really doesn't matter now I get the role number 798 so had I picked a different township I was experimenting with it sometimes the role changes so be mindful that when you are in this area you might have different rle numbers in other words the county could have multiple roles doesn't mean that it will but I'm just saying so if I picked uh a different County like I was searching different not counties townships I was searching different townships because some of this family had been in Randleman some of them had been in Cedar Grove and so I was getting very specific on how I did this research so in this case we're going to 215 this is enumeration District 2115 and I wanted to then scroll through now you could search page by Page there's only 24 pages here so it's really not that big of a deal but I still wasn't finding Nanny Watson Winslow and so what am I going to do so what I did was I went through my little trick where I I copy and paste all this information into a census record now I have done a whole other episode on how to do this because it has worked for me in the past I went and I copied all of this information and copied it into a census R here is where I had extracted all of the data for this this particular role that you see here so what I did was I went and literally copy and paste all the way down to the end I'd hit contrl C I'm going to close this out this is on image number one so let me go back to my census record just to show you how I did I'm going to open a new tab here what I do is I come down to cell B2 I rightclick I paste special as text and hit go and it brings it all in okay I also put an image number over here and I call this one one and and I drag this all the way to the bottom all right so now let me take you back over to where I've already done all that and there's a whole other episode and a whole other handout on how to do that just saying and by the way I'm using Office 365 which is the latest version of excel a lot of people have trouble doing that paste special as text in order to do that some people have problems with all the information going into one column I don't know how to help you I'm sorry I get a lot of questions about that but I do know you need the latest version of excel now you can also do it in Google Sheets by pasting special as values only I believe it is so moving on the reason why I do this is because I am trying to find her I can search by surname her her name was Winslow and so now I've got Winslow and now I'm getting just the Windslow but she's not there so let me give you some quick background on what's going on with this family because it it's important to understand so back on my tree now Nanny here she's born in 1874 but her mother dies in 1876 so she's only 2 years old when her mother dies so what happened well hilaya here he doesn't die until 1901 so he still has the family but if we go back to our census record where we had extracted the 1880 census you can see but the 2-year-old well now she should be five or 6 years old in 1880 is not listed here so where is she so then I got to thinking okay where could she be so one of the great things about doing research notes is that these are the research notes for her father hilaya Winslow and in 1872 he purchases land now remember Nancy or Nanny Watson Winslow she's born in 1872 so here in my research notes I have noted that hilaya Winslow is buying property from his father Hardy Winslow now if this is all getting confusing this should help you to understand a little bit about the family Dynamics Nanny here is the one I'm looking for in 1880 her father and her mother so hilaya here buys land from his father in 1872 so I transcribe this information I do it all in chronological order with Source citations and everything this is so that I can jump to right where I need to go as I'm sitting here going where is nanny in 1880 so scrolling down in my research notes he buys 230 acres of land and a few months later his father dies then all of the sudden not even a month later hilaya and his wife sell the said property in January of 1873 okay so you're getting some idea they buy land in Cleveland County so they've gone from Randolph County to Cleveland County okay well maybe I'm looking in the wrong place maybe nanny who remember our our mission here is to find her in 1880 maybe she's in Cleveland County and not in Randolph County so I do the same thing I pull in this research from the Census the 1880 census in Cleveland County in the same enumeration District where her father and mother were living in Cleveland County North Carolina okay so I go and I do this whole thing but I go and I start looking for Winslow so looking for nanny and again she's not here it's like where on Earth is she she's not here okay the work continues so normally what I would do the reason one of the reasons why I do this is so that I'm going okay she's five or six years old so I'm going to clear the filters and now you can see that I have imported if you look at the image numbers over here let me pull this up full so you can see it I mean the these are the image numbers down here and I am I think there was 53 pages of 53 images of stuff I've imported I'm looking for a girl who is five or 6 years old hey we're going to get back to that video here in just a moment but I want to let you know that genealogy TV has a website a newsletter and a Facebook page links for all of that are in the show notes below all right let's get back to it and my thinking was okay her mother died in Cleveland Cleveland County just a couple years after she's buried in Cleveland County so they had to have moved the same year which they did so I'm sitting there going all right I'm looking in the wrong place I'm not in Randolph County I should be looking in Cleveland County but she's not showing up under Winslow so then I'm thinking all right let's filter to I'm going to turn off select all and I'm going to filter to five six seven year olds and I'm looking for a female so I'm going to filter to females and I'm looking for maybe a given name of Nanny and the only one I'm coming up with is not her and I'm like the reason why I do this is because sometimes children are farmed out and they're living with a different family so I thought maybe she is Li listed with somebody else and I already investigated this one this is not her so now what do I do so I've done a few things I have searched the census record in the traditional way that you would search I have extracted the census and I kind of struck out but it's a really good tool to know how to do in case you know you're looking for something so then I got to thinking well wait a minute her mom dies when she's 2 years old right after having like right after having moved to Cleveland County as you can see here she dies in 1876 so here we are now in 1876 and I'm thinking dad doesn't want to take care of a young little girl I don't know what the story is there but I'm thinking that this girl is under a guardianship somewhere or that she's been farmed out to another family so I went and I searched all of the different surnames that I could think of that I knew of in that family striking out I wasn't finding anything so then I got to thinking all right let's go over to family search and look for Guardianship and the reason why I went to family search is because they've got that really cool new feature that is a full teex search so let's jump over there and take a look at how I went about looking on the full Tex search at family search okay when you first come to family search and once you sign in if you scroll down to the bottom and if you haven't done this please pay attention because this is a game changer and down here it says view experiments so you click into view experiments and I have already turned it on it might say try it over here but this is the full teex search it is still under beta but oh my gosh this is the coolest feature to come out in genealogy in a while so we go to experiments and IM immediately you're met with this little search window so what I did was I searched Guardianship and I want more I clicked on more because I want to be able to put her name in and I hit search and you can see there's over a million records here so then we can narrow this down I'm going to say United States and I'm just going to pick North Carolina um because I want to make sure that I'm hitting both counties Cleveland County and Randolph County and I hit apply and I also want to maybe dial it into the 1800s I'm going to say 1870s or maybe 1880 so then I hit apply and I'm also going to add the year 1880 just for Grins and Giggles now I'm down to 14,000 results but I think what is happening over at family search is if you have some family members that are already in your family tree I think it's taking that and saying hey I'm going to deliver these records to the top that kind of matches your family tree but also is what you're looking for all right so here I am scrolling through and I am looking for a record of guardianship for Nanny Winslow remember we're still trying to find her in the 1880 census so I'm going to take a look at this one I'm going to right click and I'm going to open in a new tab and I see a lot of interesting information now keep in mind when you first use this it does not always take you to the beginning of the file so here I see a lot of winslows let me pull this up full so you can see it I see a lot of winslows and I don't see Nanny necessarily I see a nanny here but I'm starting to see some names that kind of oh there's Nanny Winslow right there lookie there all right so this was the record that I found over the weekend and I'm like doing a happy dance because this is information I had not seen before so then I start studying this record and if you'll notice you kind have to pay attention so I wrote down all right I'm on 1429 this is where it started at but if you'll notice down here in the bottom the film strip that I have open here's a file folder and I'm going okay what is this first of all as I start to read through it I start to realize this is an estate record here's the beginning of the file it is a estate record for Sarah hail well I have hailes in my family so wait a minute what is that who is this so then I start reading through it and it says Ah McDaniel um believe that Sarah hail died with died in testate well let's go look at the family tree Sarah Henley is married to hail right so this is Nanny's grandmother her estate package so why does this matter further investigation so we keep reading through it and what happened was the group of children are filing a lawsuit because they the group hang on let me explain Mary hail here's Sarah hail that that estate record pertains to so Sarah hail when she dies see now harlon had already passed away by this time Sarah hail when she dies she has five children well four of them are still living Mary had died remember when Nanny was two Mary hail has a bunch of children and they inherit one of Sarah's estate because four of the Sarah hail children are still living but Mary hail Is Not So that oneth goes to the children well this is all very interesting story because as I sit there and read through these documents I start to realize what had happened was that apparently there was some illegal sale of the property that Sarah hail owned and it was sold under Market under a predetermined condition even though it looked like it was on the courthouse steps at auction according to all of this paperwork and so as I continue to read through it the judge says oh we're going to take that property back and we're going to resell it at a reasonable market value and they do what's really interesting though is as I was reading through this remember I was looking for nanny and I was looking for guardianship so remember this was the first page it brought me to was image 1429 and as I read through this I start to see that it says the children reside in Shelby North Carolina with exception to Nanny Winslow bing bing bing bing so where is Nanny Winslow next page at the top of the page it says who lives with ah McDaniel in Randolph County no wonder I couldn't find her she's not in a Winslow Family or a hail family she's in a McDaniel family so then I'm like okay who is this ah McDaniel right so now I'm like okay we got to figure this out so then I'm back over on the tree and I go who is McDaniel let's see maybe he's already in my tree there's an allen H McDaniel who is he well he looks like he's kind of floating out here by himself let's look at his profile he's married to Jane B hail this is one of the daughters of Sarah hail so now I'm like this totally makes sense so then I'm going okay wait a minute there's this whole family over here who fit right here McDaniel Jane is actually a child of Sarah and harlon their sisters so when Mary died she gave the baby or hilaya did gave the baby to Jane to raise and so I'm like I still haven't found her in the 1880 census back to ancestry I go back to the 1880 census and I start searching for this ah McDaniel person and I find him right there and Nanny the 5-year-old is listed as a niece with Allan H McDaniel and Jane her mother's sister this is aunt and uncle and so she's listed as a McDaniel not as a Winslow even though her name was really Winslow this happens this is why we have to kind of really think about how we go about doing our research so to think about this for a moment and to kind of recap one we searched for Nanny as Winslow in Randolph County she wasn't there we searched in Cleveland County for Nanny Winslow and she wasn't there we go and we we extracted all of the census for both Randolph County and Cleveland County now a lot of times that trick works in this case it was not successful in finding Nanny Winslow there were lots of nannies when I did that filtering which I didn't even bother to show you but none of them looked familiar and I didn't didn't even remember the McDaniel name as part of this family because it's not a direct ancestor I probably imported him a long time ago as just the husband of Jane and so I it didn't even occur to me that McDaniel might be a name that I should be looking for so then the the full text search over at family search was huge in helping me find it because a lot of times these kids are noted as guardians or like Ned in guardianship records sometimes five six seven year olds you'll find them on the farm of a neighbor they're farmed out literally as children especially if they're orphans now in this case Nanny was not an orphan but her father had moved the whole family I don't know why Nanny stayed behind maybe she was young enough that she needed a female mother role and so the rest of the family moves to Cleveland County hilaya ends up remarrying another woman named Mary which took me a f long time to figure out that there was actually two wives named Mary two different women but anyway then I finally found her in the 1880 census that was the goal was to find nanny so remember to stay on Mission when you're doing this sometimes it does kind of take you down a couple different rabbit holes but mission accomplished and and primarily because of that full Tech search over at family sege so now I can add Nanny Winslow to the 1880 census if it wasn't for the estate record of Sarah hail noting that Nanny was under the guardianship of Allan I would have never been able to piece this together so this was definitely a happy dance for me and I was able to um solve that little that little nagging thing where is she in 1880 cents I know she's got to be there it's just a matter of super sleuthing how to go about finding her so family search wins the day again with that full text search and by the way if you're wondering what all these little emojis are I just created some simple emojis these emojis mean that I have done the full research and I've done a full set of research notes for them and this one just means that I need to do some searching on location this one is I'm actively researching or I need to follow up and then this one I really like I've got information but I really haven't even started doing my full workup on that ancestor so I just wanted to share that with you before you ask and if you want to know how to do that you can just go to emojipedia and then click on you know like search whatever it is you want to search a red circle or whatever and then copy it and then you put it into suffix field let me show you so in the name field and you just put it in the suffix field right there okay so there are three handouts for this episode one that really is complimentary to this episode where we talked about the side panel and how to do that search over on the card catalog and ancestry then there's the full Tech search over at family search which is a different episode I kind of go into a lot more detail and then there is the third episode where I am talking about how to extract all that information out of a census record and put it into an Excel spreadsheet so uh all of that information is available links in the description box as to depending on whether you're a member and which which category you're a member of as to how you 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