Searching digital county histories, newspapers, and other items for ancestral names is usually on a genealogist’s to-do list. Another item to search for in these items are place names from your family’s past–before they lived in the area on which the publications focus. One of my Hancock County, Illinois, families originated in Coshocton County, Ohio. Searching for “coshocton” was a way to learn of other individuals who had that word mentioned in their biography, obituary, etc. A similar approach was done to locate references to Rush County, Indiana, for digital publications that focused on Macon County, Missouri. Searches of this type can also be a way to find references to your ancestor (that also mention the location) when the digital rendering of the name is one that cannot […]
It happens on the internet all the time. People read a headline or the first few sentences of an article or post and then “respond” to it without reading the entire thing. The headline may not give the entire story and the first few sentences may simply be written to generate a response. It’s not quite the same with looking at genealogical records, but there’s a good point to be made: look at the entire document or record before drawing a conclusion. A death certificate may give “new and exciting” information only to have an informant that you suspect really didn’t know anything about the family. One legal document–especially in a court case–may be slanted towards one person’s perspective. And anyone document in a person’s life may give […]
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