Tips for searching

The basic search screen enables you to use search criteria across both deeds and probate records. For example, if you just enter the surname ‘Smith’ it will look for any deeds and probate records that have been indexed with the surname ‘Smith’. This type of search will always take longer for your results to appear. To narrow down your results, and to obtain quicker performance, you can enter further search criteria.

The quicker way to search is to use the advanced options for Deeds or Probate, albeit this will only search against the respective registry (if you search under the advanced deeds search, you will not get any probate documents and vice versa).

To obtain the maximum results, we would suggest you start by just entering search criteria under one field (for example, a surname) and then if necessary narrow down the number of results you receive by entering more data. If you enter a lot of search criteria first, you run the risk of missing what you are looking for as a result will only be returned if all the criteria is met. For example, when searching deeds if you enter ‘Smith’ as a Grantor Surname, ‘Jones’ as a Grantee Surname, ‘Conveyance’ for Nature of Deed and ‘Arbory’ for Parish, the system will search for any conveyance registered in the parish of Arbory where a selling party has the surname ‘Smith’ and a purchaser has the surname ‘Jones’ – should any one part fail, say if there is a conveyance deed recorded in the system as having been made between ‘Smith’ and ‘Jones’ but it is in the parish of Rushen and not Arbory, no results will show.