Whenever you are writing or talking about a person be specific. First names are rarely specific enough, particularly in some families. First and last names are best, perhaps combined with a date of birth or date of death. My mother has three Aunt Ruths. It usually took more than just “Aunt Ruth” to know to whom someone was referring. Sometimes it was clear from context, but not always. Don’t create additional confusion in the records you leave behind. Be specific.
If someone is your ancestor, they were born (hard to avoid that), they reproduced (married or not), and eventually died (hard to avoid that as well). Everything else is somewhat negotiable–within reason. Everything else you “think” that is true about them may not be true. This gets especially true as your research extends back in time and what a person “knows” often is based more on what we assume as opposed to things we have evidence for. They might not have attended the same church their children did. People change churches for a variety of reasons. They may have spelled their name differently than their descendants do or did. They might not have really cared how it was spelled. They might not have been a member of the […]
Generally speaking, the easiest explanation is usually correct. The more logical hoops one has to jump through, the more times one has to “put away common sense,” and the like, the more likely the explanation isn’t correct. Unusual things do happen, but there is a reason that they are unusual. That “oops” baby great-grandma had at the age of 55, twelve years after her last child was born, most likely is a child of one of her daughters in their late teens. The more creative you have to get to explain something, the more likely something simply is not correct. Now…if you find first hand evidence of those unusual events, that is a different story. Just make certain the informants are reliable. And sober…it helps if they were […]
An 1881 affidavit in a War of 1812 pension case mentioned three children of the veteran and his wife. The youngest of those three was the one making out the affidavit and she referenced the dates of birth for her two older siblings. That was necessary to backtrack into a time frame for her parents’ marriage. Information on the younger children was not necessary to establish that marriage date–so they aren’t mentioned. The genealogist needs those names. The pension official did not. Always keep in mind the original purpose of any document and analyze it in that context. Not your own. The document may have been complete and accurate given the situation in which it was created. A lot of us don’t do more work than we need […]
When you think you are done with your research, ask yourself: Sometimes when we think we are done we are. Many times we are not.
If things “don’t quite make sense,” consider that a couple’s first child might not have been both of theirs or might have been born less than the “necessary” time after their marriage. Their last child, particularly if born significantly after the couple’s other children, might have actually been their grandchild. Most of the time a couple’s children are theirs, but there are times where other possibilities could be the reality:
There were three matches to my search of the 1850 census for Washington/Sullivan Counties in Tennessee for name/age combination of a person I had traced from their death certificate back until the 1860 census when they were first enumerated with their husband. I didn’t have a father’s name because the early 20th century death certificate said father was “unknown.” I wasn’t certain how accurate the mother’s name was either to be honest. I cannot just grab one of those 1850 census entries and say “she’s the one.” I did what I usually do in these cases–try to find the people who matched my search term in later census years. Two of them were easy to eliminate as being the person of interest–20 years later the same name women […]
Are those spelling variants Soundex-equivalent? Working on some Bowerys and Boweys in Washington County, Tennessee, and I have to remind myself that these two spellings are not Soundex-equivalent. That “r” makes a difference in terms of Soundex searches.
Unless a set of ancestors died on the same day, there was a time when one of them was a widow or a widower. The decision to remain single is a personal one but was often impacted on finances, whether small children were present in the home when the spouse died, availability of family and friends to provide assistance, personal need for companionship, desire to have more children, etc. These reasons are personal and some are subjective. One ancestor who becomes a widow at twenty-six with small children may feel the need to marry again relatively soon. Another in seemingly the same situation may never marry again. Others may wait years or decades to marry again. The key is to not assume. What you should do is research […]
From a while back… When making digital copies of original records, I take notes on paper instead of using some sort of note taking software. Those notes (what I found, what I didn’t find, what I noticed, etc. ) are important and need to be kept with the images made from the actual records. My last step after I’ve made record images is to take a picture of my notes and put it in the same digital folder as the record images.
Your relative may not have written the “Great American Novel” or otherwise noteworthy fiction, but it’s possible he or she wrote something else that was published. Old newspapers may have contained a letter from your ancestor (either as a letter to the editor or as a “local correspondent). Trade publications may have contained a “how to” or career-based article written by your ancestor or about your ancestor. Publications of social or fraternal organizations may have also contained some of your ancestor’s writings. Digital images of newspapers are available on a variety of online sites, both free and fee-based. Other publications may be available digitally at Google Books, Archive.org, or other archives of digital images of out-of-copyright publications.
I had the death certificates for two siblings. The mother’s maiden name was not the same. They were clearly different and the script was precise and legible. One was Fox and one was Conner. Further research indicated the mother’s woman’s last name at birth was Conner and that after her Conner husband died, she married a man with the last name of Fox. So the Fox reference was not to her maiden name, but to a different married name. The informant made an error, but gave me another name from that woman’s past. Many times those “wrong” pieces of information are clues to something else (the exception to this seems to be dates–people often didn’t know their age or lied about it). Any other piece of information that […]
I’m looking for a woman named Wilhelmina Senf who immigrated to the United States between 1846 and 1852. Sometimes her first name is rendered as Mina and sometimes her last name is spelled Senf, Serf, Senft, Serft, Zenf, Zerf, Zenft, Zerft, etc. I need to make certain that my searches are covering all these possible variations of her name. To do that I made a chart with the name variants spelled out. The problem is that soundex and “sounds like” options for Senf may not catch all the variants that begin with an “S.” The same thing is true for the variants that start with a “Z.” The “n” being read as an “r” creates that problem. I also need to make certain that while she’s usually listed […]
Researchers who encounter two different years of birth for a relative in records that only provide an age may wonder which is “correct.” The reality is that neither may be right. Both ages could be off and the actual year of birth could be in between the two that are suggested by the available records. Don’t just “average” them and call it a day. Include each year of birth in your records as an alternate date and cite the source from which it was taken. There may be no other sources for the date of birth and it may be impossible to tell which of the two records is most likely to be accurate. Of course one should look for other records as much as possible, but sometimes […]
A witness to a document is simply testifying that they saw a person sign (or execute) a document and that they know who that person is. Witnesses do not have to have any relationship to the person executing the document although they have to be old enough to legally sign a document themselves. Do not assume that witnesses are related to the person signing the document. The witnesses could simply be other people who happened to be nearby when the document was signed. They could even be the person who wrote the document if your ancestor only signed the document and did not actually take pen to paper and write it himself.
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