Use these strategies to navigate
and search the site.

1. Drill Down:  Use either the Navigation Bar Menu selections above or the Hyper Links on the Home Page to "drill down" to desired information.

2. Jump:  Click a Sidebar Menu selection on the left to jump to a desired Record or Lineage Snippet.

3. Trailmaker:  Use the Navigation Bar "Trailmaker" above like bread crumbs marking your trail back to the Home Page starting point, or click the crumbs to jump around.

4. Arms Logo Home:  Click the Crossland Arms Logo at the top of any page to jump directly back to the Home Page.

5. Site Search:  Review the Site Search Tips below for strategies about using the Site Search Box on the Sidebar.

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1. Getting Started:  Type your search terms (what you are looking for) into the Site Search Box, then click Find.  The Results will then be presented to you as hyperlinks to documents for you to check, similar to Yahoo search operations.

2. Correct Spelling:  Make sure your search terms are spelled correctly.  The search engine will attempt to find words that sound similar to your search terms, but it is always best to try to spell the search terms correctly.

3. Spelling Variations:  If there are known spelling variations or incorrect spellings of a search term, try them.

4. Capitalization:  Capitalize proper nouns.  Lowercase words will match any case.  For example, typing marriage will return all documents containing the words marriage, Marriage, and MARRIAGE.  However, typing Marriage will only search for documents containing Marriage.

5. Multiple Words:  Use multiple words as search terms.  The search will return more refined results from several words than from a single word.  For example, typing Bedford county marriages will yield more relevant results than typing only marriages.  (Keep in mind, relevant results are returned even if they don't contain all the queried search terms.)

6. Similar Words:  Use similar words.  The more similar words you use in a search, the more relevant results you will get back.

7. Quotation Marks:  Use quotation marks to find words which must appear adjacent to each other, for example, "Meredith T Crossland land grant".  Otherwise, the search results will include the word Meredith, the letter T, and the words Crossland, land and grant but not necessarily in that order; the words may appear anywhere, and in any order, within the document.

8. Plus (+) or Minus (-):  Use a plus sign when your search term(s) must appear in the search results.  Use a minus sign to indicate term(s) not wanted in the results.  The plus sign tells the search engine that a certain word or phrase is required in the search results, and a minus sign indicates that a word or phrase must be absent in the search results.

Note: A phrase must be contained within quotation marks.  Leave no spaces between the plus or minus sign and the term.  For example: +"marriage bond".

9. Field Searches:  Use field searches.  Field searches allow you to create specific searches for words that appear in a specific part of a document.  A field search can be performed on body text (body:), title text (title:), alt text (alt:), meta description (desc:), meta key words (keys:) or URL (url:).  The field name should be in lowercase and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces between the colon and the search term.


Note: The field searches can only be followed by a word or phrase.  Phrases must be contained within quotation marks.)

10. Wildcards:  Use wildcards.  Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request.  The * character is used as the wildcard character.  For instance, searching for wh* will find the words what, why, when, whether, and any other word that starts with wh.  Searching for *her* will find the words here, whether, together, gathering, and any other word that contains her anywhere in the word.

Wildcards may be combined with the standard plus (+) and minus (-) modifiers, quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers.  +wh* -se*ch will find all pages which have a word that starts with wh and which does not contain a word that starts with se and ends with ch.  "wh* are" will find the phrases where are, what are, why are, etc.  Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request. The * character is used as the wildcard character.  For instance, searching for wh* will find the words what, why, when, whether, and any other word that starts with wh.  Searching for *her* will find the words here, whether, together, gathering, and any other word that contains her anywhere in the word.

Wildcards may be combined with the standard plus (+) and minus (-) modifiers, quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers.  +wh* -se*ch will find all pages which have a word that starts with wh and which does not contain a word that starts with se and ends with ch.  "wh* are" will find the phrases where are, what are, why are, etc.

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