When I’m stuck on a family, I ask myself:
am I sure I have found all the easy ones?
Sometimes I have and then the work is more difficult. But other times there are easier members of the family to find and sometimes finding those individuals can provide me with additional information to help find the others.
These “easy pickings” include:
- Individuals whose name is less likely to be spelled wrong in a census.
- Children in a census whose ages are less likely to be off .
- A relative who was better set financially and left more records.
- A relative who received a military pension.
- A relative who was in a different social class and left better records.
- A relative who lived longer when perhaps better records were kept.
- A relative who lived in an area that kept better records.
These approaches won’t always work. No approach always works. But it’s always good to ask if there’s a close relative to your “problem person” who might have left better records.
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One response
In my organizing project, I’ve noticed quite a few people who don’t have wills attached, who should. I think I last worked on these families before Ancestry made so many wills available. I need to go back and see if there are “easy pickings” there.