This site indexes millions of entries on other genealogy websites. By far the biggest chunk as of August 2010 is the Texas marriages.

When searching, remember that the material was extracted from websites that presented the information in a wide variety of formats. This webmaster writes many programs to interpret the data and found many problems, such as when formats change abruptly.

Always check the variations of the surname spellings. Remember, though, that some names are captured incorrectly.

The format of some transcription projects is such that they do not distinguish between given names and surnames, so if there is any possibility that the ancestral surname might have been written as more than one word, check under the last word.

Let us say, for example, that a name consists of three words: Martin Van Buren, for example. Since multiple given names (like Mary Anne Smith) are far more common, the program looks at the end of the name and works right-to-left looking for a space, and considers everything to the right of that space the surname. Thus, if your surname is Van Buren you should check under Buren.

Do this even if your surname is one word but could possibly be written, out of stupidity or malice, as two words, such as Laforest. A lot of people like to play Little Miss Editor with names and addresses, changing things to “correct” what needed no correction. So Mary Laforest might get miswritten as Mary La Forest (and she gets filed before Agnes Labbe on the honor roll, making Mary Laforest think she didn’t make it because she is looking under Laforest.)

Logic: The alphabet consists of letters. Nothing else should affect alphabetical order. In SortedByName.com, it’s surname, then given name. Spaces and hyphens in a surname (Such as Du Pont) are disregarded, so DuPont, Du Pont and Dupont are all treated the same.

Given names do not interrupt groups of a surname. All the SMITH go together, SMITHSON, BARNEY does not interrupt them between SMITH, SIMON and SMITH, SYLVESTER.

The given name is treated as a sequence of letters regardless of whether it is broken up into words. So Maryanne is treated the same as Mary Anne.