Pick a day in your ancestor’s life. Try and answer the following questions as of that date:
- Where was my ancestor living?
- Who was in his (her) household?
- What was the ancestor’s occupation?
- What was the ancestor’s age?
- What was going on nationally on this date (at this point in time)?
- What was going on locally/regionally?
- Were my ancestor’s parents alive?
- Were my ancestor’s siblings alive?
- Where would he (she) have gone to church the previous Sunday?
- Who were my ancestor’s neighbors?
You get the idea. Focusing one just one day may be enough to cause you to learn about other days in the process.
5 Responses
Love this post. This is also a good list for jumpstarting some writing.
It is a good jumpstart to writing. I also suggest, if the time period is right, that people think what their ancestor’s 1890 census enumeration would have looked like.
[…] Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge for today was to read Michael John Neill’s post “Pick A Day”, pick an ancestor and answer the ten questions listed in the […]
[…] Michael John Neill wrote “Pick a Day” on Thursday in his Genealogy Tip of the Day blog and I thought it would be a good […]
This is an excellent prompt. I keep a file of genealogy writing prompts and this will be added to it. I’m currently doing a weekly post but intend to increase the frequency eventually.