Searching Madison County, NY and Ingalls Family

The search engine is limited in the number of pages spidered. Check indexes to the major transcriptions. Alphabetic listings have been provided whenever possible to assist you in finding your ancestor. Use Edit/Find when searching a particular page.

By default the search engine tries to locate pages on this site which have exact matches for all of the words entered in your search query. If that fails, it then tries to locate pages which contain any words in your search query. If that happens a short message is displayed at the top of the search results indicating this has been done.

Special note to Ingalls researchers: Because the name Ingalls is part of the website name, if you put in a query with the name Ingalls, the most relevant hits for content will be listed first.   

There are several ways to modify the default search behavior.

1. phrase search
   The search engine supports three types of phrase search.
   To match an exact phrase, use quotes around the phrase - Example: "free search engine"
   To match a near (within a couple of words) phrase, use square brackets [around the words] - Example: [free search engine]
   To match a far (within several words) phrase, use braces { around the words } - Example: {free search engine}

2. + and - qualifiers
   If you prepend a word with + that word is required to be on the page.
   If you prepend a word with - that word is required to not be on the page.
   Example: +always -never

3. * wildcard
   If a query word ends with a * all words on a page which start the same way as that query word will match.
   Example: gift*

4. ? wildcard
   If a query word contains a ? any character will match that position.
   Example: b?g

5. boolean search
   You can use the following boolean operators in your search: AND, OR, NOT. These operators MUST be in capital letters.
   Example: (contact AND us) OR (about AND us)

All of these techniques can be combined: +alway* -ne??r*