This posting was made in response to DearMyrt's October podcast where she discusses the parentsearch function which is only available in the CD ROM version of the IGI (available in Family History Centers). The IGI is an event based database and families are not organized by family group sheet which makes finding all the children of a couple difficult unless you use this parentsearch feature. As the CD ROM version of the IGI is no longer being updated and the newest version is the online version, many people are disappointed that they can't to a parent search using the online version.

Myrtle offers a simple solution to this by suggesting that you can leave the first name blank, enter the last name and then put in the parents names to search. However, in 7 years of using the site I have NEVER been able to do this. In fact, I checked again after listening to DearMyrtle's podcast. I receive the error message:
"If you enter a last name without a first name, you must either not enter parent or spouse names, a year, or you must enter a batch number or a film number"

I don't know why DearMyrt thinks it can be done but if I can't do it (and I've worked in the software industry for 9 years) then you probably won't be able to either!

However, over the years I've developed my own way of doing a similar search and am going to give you instructions that will enable you to search on all children with a specific last name in the same parish. While this is not a foolproof method to identify all siblings of your ancestor (some might be christened in other parishes) it does work for those in the same parish. Here are the instructions.

First if you go to the