Generalizing is necessary at times in creating a research plan. Thinking about what records were usually created and what most of them usually contained is a way to determine where to next focus research energies. But I cannot use the belief that “most of the time x usually happened at y time or at y place to enter dates or locations in my database as if they were documented facts. Peter and Barbara Bieger had their first child in Warsaw, Illinois, in January of 1851. One might assume that they were married in or near Warsaw a few years before the birth. Nope. They were married in 1849 (a few years before the birth, but…) in Cincinnati, Ohio, where they lived for a very short time before moving.
An ancestor died in 1877 and is buried in the Bethany Church Cemetery in Tioga, Illinois. There is a funeral entry for her in the records of the church which gives the same date of death as her tombstone but does not mention where she died. There is no civil record of her death as not all deaths were recorded in Illinois in 1877–this was still in the early days of recording civil records of deaths and births in Illinois). There is no obituary for her and no family Bible recording her vital events exists. My entry for her in my database should not indicate she died in Tioga. She likely died near Tioga, given that she is buried there. Tioga is close to both a township line […]
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