If your ancestor’s church disbanded, there are several places the records might have gone: the local dump the family of the last minister a local church of the same denomination a regional or national church organization, synod, assembly, diocese, etc. Contact local historical or genealogical societies, local churches of the same denomination, and regional and national archives (or governing bodies) of the denomination and see if they know what might have happened to the records.
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.
I traced the family from Kentucky into Indiana where they split up went to Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. Because there were quite a few relatives of the father that were involved in this migration, I assumed that I had the whole migration cohort. I was wrong. It turns out there were members of the wife’s family in the cohort as well. They were not immediately noticed because I had not focused on the wife’s siblings. The additional migrating cohorts tended to be married sisters whose new last names I did not have. It was years ago when I made the discovery. I realized that I needed to view migration cohorts as “infinite hotels” (for those familiar with the reference). While the analogy isn’t accurate, it does not have […]
My map of ancestral pools just dumped all my maternal families into one pool. I decided that really wasn’t helpful as it stripped away the fact that these families were from six villages with most of them being from one village. So I color coded it by village of origin. That reminded me which portions of my Ostfriesen pool were from the same village and which ones were from others. The thing I need to add is something showing the relative position of these villages and how close (or far away) they are from each other. That matters as well. But is there some chart or organizational method you use where color could help? Help support Genealogy Tip of the Day by visiting any of the following sites: Try a GenealogyBank Genealogy […]
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