How Full Text Search Broke Through my 30-Year Brick Wall

The Heritage I Never Expected

I’ve known the name of my 3x great grandfather since the 1990s. Alexander Delisser, surgeon, was the name entered on the Queensland death certificate of my 2x great grandfather, Adam Lymburner Lymburner.

However, after three decades of writing Alexander’s name down, searching for his birth place and his parents, I kept hitting one brick wall after another. That trail went cold, so I shelved the research and concentrated on the son who changed his name. (See links below regarding that story).

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When my Ancestry DNA results came back showing 2% Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, I didn’t think too much of it. 2% isn’t a lot… or is it? But when a couple of close relatives tested and their results showed not only Ashkenazi but Sephardic Jewish heritage too, I started to pay attention.

For context, Ashkenazi Jews trace their roots to Central and Eastern Europe, while Sephardic Jews came from Spain and Portugal. During the Inquisition many Sephardic families fled, some to Amsterdam, some to London, and from there on to places like the Caribbean. That’s how our Delissers ended up in Jamaica.

I realised I’d been so focused on the Lymburner side, the name change, the inheritance, the move to Australia, that I’d never really asked who the Delissers were.

And at the centre of this puzzle sat my 3x great grandfather, Alexander Delisser.

I knew he had marched his son off to have his name changed when Adam was only twelve years old and I knew he had moved to Italy and died there several years later. I also knew that two of his teenage children tragically died soon after, back in London, four days apart and their bodies exhumed and taken to Florence, to be buried with their father.

Then the trail went cold. I didn’t know why the family went to Florence, nor when and I really didn’t know who Alexander’s parents were. Without trapsing across the globe to Italy or London, I genuinly thought I’d found everything I could about him. I’d searched the usual databases, combed through what records I could access, and pieced together what felt like the most complete picture possible. Although, Alexander’s story remained frustatingly incomplete.

Then FamilySearch introduced their Full Text search function, and everything changed.

For those unfamiliar with it, Full Text search uses AI to recognise old handwriting and makes the actual text within historical documents searchable. Instead of relying on someone to have indexed a name, you can now search for words buried deep within parish registers, wills, vestry minutes, documents that might mention your ancestor in the middle of a paragraph rather than in a neat, indexed list. It’s revolutionary to say the least!

Suddenly, I wasn’t just finding indexed names and dates. I was reading actual documents, actual words written about Alexander and his family. The uncle’s will appeared first, formal legal language that finally documented who Alexander’s father was. Uncle Ellis Delisser, you are a gem! You listed all the children of your brother Aaron and named each and every one of them.

Here’s what I realised: I didn’t need a baptism or birth certificate. Don’t get me wrong, those would’ve been brilliant for pinning down exact dates, but just knowing who his father was? That single fact was enough. It transformed thirty years of uncertainty into confirmed family relationships and connected our family to the Sepharidic Jewish community not only in London, but in Jamaica as well. The speculation could finally stop.

But, then, another revelation came from the St Pancras parish vestry minutes.

These were just everyday administrative records of parish business, but they contained so much more. Within those mundane entries, FamilySearch’s Full Text search revealed the why and when of Alexander’s move to Italy. The pieces that had seemed so disconnected suddenly formed a complete, coherent picture. The uncle’s will and the vestry minutes together showed me Alexander’s movements weren’t mysterious at all, they made perfect sense once I understood the family circumstances driving his decisions.

After three decades of knowing my 3x great grandfather’s name but being unable to push past that generation, a new search tool finally broke through the barrier.

This is what keeps me returning to this work, what keeps me up at night and a reminder that we’re never truly finished. Just when you think you’ve exhausted every avenue, a freshly digitised collection or a new search function opens up entirely new chapters of the story. Alexander Delisser went from a figure shrouded in speculation to someone whose movements, motivations, and family connections I can now trace with confidence.

Although the DNA puzzle remains, that curious 2% Ashkenazi against a backdrop of Sephardic heritage still sits there, unexplained. But at least now I’ve got Alexander’s Italian sojourn sorted. Sometimes the answers aren’t where we first look for them. And sometimes, the tools we need to find those answers haven’t even been built yet when we start searching.

As I always say, never give up, one day those brick walls will come tumbling down.

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Read more about Alexander Delisser and the Delisser/Lymburner history over on my family history archive at WeAre .xyz

Read Alexander Delisser’s story here

Why Adam Lymburner Delisser changed his name

For more Delisser Family History - select the link and a name on the tree to read more of this fascinating piece of our history.

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Sources and Further Reading

• British Genealogy Forum - Delisser Family Discussion: https://www.british-genealogy.com/forum/threads/73927-Delisser

• History of the Jews in Jamaica (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Jamaica

• The History of Surgery and Surgical Training in the UK (PubMed Central): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8377927/

• The Sculptors Associated with Florence’s ‘English’ Cemetery: https://www.florin.ms/sculptors.html

• Grand Tour (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour

• English Cemetery, Florence (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Cemetery,_Florence

• Edmund Alexander Delisser - WikiTree: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Delisser-29

• E. A. Delisser (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._A._Delisser