After having posted about “ancient research aids,”  I got a very pleasant email from John Bacus, a product manager on Ancestry.com’s search engine.  He pointed out the “location filters” on the search engine.  They are located just under the location box in each search box, just as the name filters are just beneath the name boxes.  These filters,allow a user to restrict to the exact place specified, to a specific county, or a county and adjacent counties, or the particular state, among the “granularity options.”   So even with new search, it’s  possible to query the number people named Johnson in Clay County, Missouri, on the 1930 census.

I think these filters work well.  I had been overlooking them for awhile–quite embarrassing since I was in the first group of bloggers shown these features before they debuted!  I encourage you to try them with various levels of granularity and see the results produced.

Craig