I’ve been working on the husband of my aunt as he moved across three states and went through four marriages in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I have been fortunate to find many records.
What I have not done is to track my reasoning of why I think I have the same person in different locations. That needs to be done as I research. I am saving the documents I find in a separate folder on my digital media. I need to create a text file tracking what I have found, what my process was, and how I know I have the same person.
This needs to be done as I research. It will save time later and decrease the chance I merge different people together into one compilation that never really existed.
2 Responses
Great advice Michael. Do you use a table to keep the tracking notes, or just a doccument? I need to do this for a difficult ancestor.
I just use a document to take notes as I find things as that works best for me. One could use a table and make a line for each document if brief summaries are more your style. I tend to include quick thoughts and analysis and so a document with a section for each thing I find tends to work best for me.