Your best bet when searching this site is to call up the page you need, and then use the ‘Edit…Find’ feature of your browser. If you are looking for a name or place on the page, use ‘find’ and it will work through the page as it goes along. This is a good way to find your ancestor, especially if you don’t know his parents. For example if the furthest you can get back is a Chester Putnam born around 1917 some place in Iowa, call up the Iowa 1920 census and search that for the word Chester. When you find him, you see his parents there too. It will generally say (if I have been lucky) who they are and where they were in 1900. Then if it says his folks John and Harriet were in Lake County, Illinois in 1900. Go look there. It will be in alphabetical order so no need to even search, just scribe down. When you find that listing you’ll get more info and so on back. I don’t put everything in every entry. Would take years more than I have, but you can easily get back to the early and mid 1800s and around then (especially in the 1850 censuses) I will give the line completely back if I know it. Good Luck. 

Then you have to do your part. Send me the details that I am lacking, such as wives’ maiden names, correct spelling of the kids and ANYTHING I don’t show. I have every scrap I know in these reports, so if it’s not there, then I just don’t have it.

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