Do you create a genealogy research bibliography for areas where you research? Or are the sources of information for a certain area all in your head? I’m guilty of this as well. I’ve researched families since the early 1980s in the county where I grew up and where most of my family had lived since the 1840s/1850s. But I’ve never even created a crude bibliography of what’s available, where it is, and how to access it. It’s all in my head–where things are at (what things are technically in the wrong office at the courthouse because of space issues), the rough years of various local records, what churches in my people’s past have records (and where they are), what towns have newspapers, and the like. It might do […]
From a while back: I never really did much work on the siblings of great-great-grandma Nancy Jane (Newman) Rampley (1846-1923) and recently decided to focus on her sister, Sarah. Sarah was born in about 1851 in Rush County, Indiana. Obituaries for several of her siblings in the early 20th century indicated she lived in Macon County, Missouri, and was Sarah Graves. Online compilations contained little detail and, without any sources, was somewhat suspect. While it is suggested to research from the present to the past, I opted to research from the past to the present–starting with Sarah in the 1860 census with her parents and moving forward. The short version is that this approach was the successful one. Marriage and census records quickly painted a tentative picture of […]
Keep a document that has a listing of the various ways your various ancestral names can actually be pronounced. A list of spellings is not a bad idea either but knowing various ways a name could have been said can be helpful as well.
All dogs bark. Things that bark grow on trees. Therefore, dogs grow on trees. Always read over your logic and reasoning used to reach a conclusion. Also make certain you understand definitions of words and the context in which they are used. Genealogical records are full of legal and esoteric words more nuanced than “bark” and it can be easy to confuse them. Avoid barking up the wrong genealogical tree–check your reasoning and your definitions.
Are you aware of the local geography where your ancestor lived? Having access to maps is a great help, but having a certain amount of information “in your head” can save time. For your city ancestors do you know the “name of the neighborhood” (if there was one)? Do you know names of nearby neighborhoods and towns? How close did your family live to the line that divided one city from another? For rural ancestors the same thing applies? What were the names of adjacent townships? How close were they to the county line? Did they live in a part of the county that had a nickname (perhaps based upon where most residents were originally from)? Failing to know some local geography may cause you to look in […]
Now released for immediate download. Ever wanted to create graphics, mind maps, and other graphics for your genealogy research easily? Now you can and we’ll show you how. Notebooklm at Google.Create audio and video overviews, mind maps, reports, quizzes, infographics, and slide decks from your uploaded files, genealogy documents, and the like. Notebooklm is not perfect by a long shot, but it may give you insight into your own research. We will take a responsible genealogical approach to using Notebooklm. It is a tool and like any tool needs to be used carefully and judiciously. We won’t necessarily agree with all the conclusions it reaches, but thinking about its insights and trying to prove/disprove them or analyze them further may enhance our research in ways we did not […]
Genealogy “tricks” are a dime a dozen on the internet and there’s really no “trick” at all. It’s just being diligent and searching for every piece of paper or record that you can find. If we could get every shred of paper, digital image, stone, book, etc. with our ancestor’s name on it, research would be much easier. But that’s not the way it works. One approach is to think about what piece of information you would like to know and make a list of individuals who may have known that information (or may know it today) or records on which that information may have been written down. Given the time period and location, a marriage date could be in the family Bible, a civil record of the […]
It is important somewhere to keep track of your research logic as you progress. Otherwise you might not remember “why” you are researching a certain person. Several years ago I focused on a certain Benjamin Butler in an 1850 census enumeration as being “mine.” Using that enumeration as the starting point, I searched other records and made progress. I located a fair amount of information. One problem–I didn’t track WHY I thought this 1850 census entry was for the correct person. What I found later all tied to the 1850 guy, but not to the one who was really “mine.” It took me hours to reconstruct my reason and that was time wasted. Fifteen minutes to write up my reason to begin with would have saved me time […]
I first worked on my children’s Belgian ancestors years ago when manual searches of records was the only option. When using the vital records from the 19th century, I used them the way I had other European records from the same time span. I looked in the “book” for the time period of interest and read through the entries for the years I thought included the person’s birth date. Then, if I had the correct person and had the names of the parents, I scanned the years before and after the birth to locate siblings. I began my searches of these records using the same approach. I had never used the records before, but knew from the catalog description they were organized chronologically so I would use the […]
Don’t assume you know your ancestor’s port of entry into the United States. While some ports of entry may be more likely than others based upon the time period and the general area of the United States where your ancestor settled, there may be things about your ancestor’s migration of which you are unaware and any of those details could have impacted their port of arrival. Where was the ancestor originally going to settle, look for work, establish himself, etc.? That may not be where they ended up or where they spent the majority of their life. You may not even really be aware of that location. Families don’t always tell everything or even remember everything. No one may want to mention that great-grandpa tried making a living […]
Did you put home movies on VHS tapes years ago? Have you made any attempt to preserve them digitally? Read about my friend’s experience digitizing his own VHS tapes in this guest post we put on our Rootdig site.
When I was small and fell and got hurt or there was something that I needed to tell my mother, she would often ask me “what hamp?” That’s a good question to ask about our ancestors as well–although we may end up knowing less about the situation than my mother did after she heard my explanation. My great-grandfather lost two farms to foreclosures between 1898 and 1910. For the next fifteen or so years he and the family moved from one rental farm to another. Then in the mid-1920s he “settled” and purchased a farm that remains in the family until this day. I did not give it much thought until I looked through the estate settlement for his father who died in 1916. It took over ten […]
A relative of my children sent me a sketch of a relative from a 1923 history of Chariton and Howard Counties in Missouri. Most of what is in it is consistent with information obtained from other sources. That is fortunate as sometimes biographies in these mug books contain significant amounts fo fiction. These county histories are typically considered secondary sources for most (if not all) of the information they contain and need to be fact-compared with other, hopefully more contemporary and primary sources. Just because a source is a secondary source does not mean it is wrong…just that a comparison is needed. Anything in these materials can be wrong, right, or somewhere in between. What’s in these biographies was often provided by the family–which can be good or […]
Some married couples never see their former spouse after a divorce. Many times that is because one partner leaves and never returns. There are other possibilities. Some former spouses may continue to reside in the same area and interact with each other, especially if they have children. One divorced couple in my family appear on a mortgage with a son-in-law after their divorce. Other times couples eventually remarry, even after they’ve had subsequent spouses. Or they may even later live together, even if they don’t remarry. Those aren’t made up examples—just situations from my own family where I’ve removed the names.
Never be so stuck on an initial conclusion that you avoid other reasonable scenarios or avoid looking for records because the person you need to find “simply cannot be in that location.” A relative concluded a family member returned to Germany for a visit and returned to the United States simply because the ancestor could not be located in the 1870 census. The story of the trip was repeated enough that it became an accepted fact. It’s easy to jump to conclusions when we are first starting out. We can sometimes “break brick walls” by going back and reviewing those initial conclusions.
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