Think for just a minute before making that post to a mailing list or asking that question to a friend. Is there a chance you are overlooking something obvious? It is also good to give yourself sometime to let a conclusion “sit” in your mind before publishing it or posting it. Sometimes our first, “off the cuff” reactions are correct and sometimes they aren’t. Haste may cause you to create a brick wall where none existed. I almost assumed a relative had military service based upon his WW2 era classification record. Turns out that the classification he received meant something different during war time than during peace time and the chart of classifications I was using were peace time classifications. When I looked at the appropriate set of […]
A complete discussion of copyright law is beyond our purpose here at “Tip of the Day,” but suffice it to say that a genealogical fact cannot be copyrighted. Your cousin in Arizona cannot copyright the fact that “John Smith was born in Maryland in 1783.” What he can copyright is a report he compiled showing why that year of birth is correct. The report he would be within his rights to lay copyright claim to. Of course, if he spent years uncovering a fact and you use that fact in a compilation, it might be nice to give him credit for “finding” that fact. If you don’t, he might not share anything with you again! ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Sometimes a researcher is tempted to “ignore” the “in-laws” or “step” relatives because they are not “really relatives.” However, this can be a big mistake. Your relatives interacted quite a bit with these individuals and there is a chance a record on them could provide information on your ancestor. It is always possible that these indivduals have known your ancestor long before they became related by marriage. Your ancestors did not live in complete isolation. Researching their close acquaintances may provide information on your direct line ancestors. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Official or unofficial copies of documents may be located in places where you might not think to look. My ancestor’s declaration of intention from Illinois is contained in his Nebraska homestead application. Another ancestor’s naturalization is contained in his homestead file as well. Chicago voter’s registrations give years and places of naturalization for those who were not native born citizens. Widow’s applications for pension may contain certified copies of their marriage records. A cousin who got married in Illinois and divorced in Florida filed a copy of his Florida divorce decree in the Illinois county where he was married. And the list goes on. Where might your ancestor have had to record a copy of a document? It might not be in a place where you think. ———————————— […]
In a word, no. Salt Lake City’s Family History Library (http://www.familysearch.org) is a wonderful library in which to research. Their collection of genealogy materials is the largest in the world. But remember that they do not have everything. For many Illinois counties, the Family History Library does not have personal property tax records from the mid-nineteenth century and later. While most genealogical problems do not require the use of these records, there are times when these records are helpful in placing a specific person in a specific location at a specific point in time. There are other counties where court case packets have not been filmed and where tract indexes to land records are still accessible only at the courthouse. The Family History Library is an excellent place […]
A few things worth remembering: Indexes to courthouse records are not always strictly alphabetical. Sometimes they are indexed only the first letter of the last name. Some indexes are partially by last name and then by first name. The Mc and Mac names can be at the front or the end of the “M” section. Not every party in a lawsuit appears in the defendant or plaintiff index. Indexes can be incorrect or missing. Courthouses may have indexes to records that were not filmed by the Family History Library. A good idea is to ask a local person from the area who is familiar with the records. These people can be an excellent resource. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Before I say this, let me say that copying someone else’s data into your database is not advised at all. But at least make certain it makes sense before entering it into your database. I saw an online family tree where the mother and father died before their children were born and another couple who had their children before they (the parents) were born. Woah! And if your database indicates someone died in 1742 and served in the American Revolution something is decidedly amiss. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Are there time periods in your ancestor’s life that are not accounted for? What was he or she doing during those periods? Where was he or she living? The first five years of my ancestor’s life in the United States were a complete mystery to me. John Ufkes came to the United States in the spring of 1869, settling in Illinois. He cannot be found in the 1870 census and there is no record of him until his marriage in 1874. His life is well documented after then until his death in 1924. There are a variety of land, court, census, church and other records fairly clearly documenting his life in Adams and Hancock County, Illinois. I realize five years is not a long time in the life […]
Do you know what the difference between a grantor and a grantee is? A grantor is someone who is selling or transferring their ownership in property to someone else. A grantee is someone who is purchasing property or is having property transferred to. One joke I make during many lectures is about the genealogist who spent hours looking for a deed when her ancestor purchased land. Her time was spent looking in the grantor indexes. Of course, looking for when her ancestor purchased land should be done in the grantee indexes. It can be easy to get the two terms mixed up. Make certain you are looking in the right index. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
We don’t normally feature websites, but I have been locating so much information on Google Books that I thought it worth mentioning. Google Books has digitized thousands of books and allows users to search them using OCR (optical character recognition) technology. I’ve found many pieces of information I was unaware of, including the fact that a great-great-grandfather’s brother-in-law was a chronic alcholic and that his son was mentally incompetent, but I digress. I have been searching http://books.google.com for either some of my more unusual last names or just typing in ancestral names. Not all books are completely online, but there will be links with citation information so you can try and get a copy of the book yourself, either by purchasing it or obtaining it on interlibrary loan. […]
Many county USGenWeb pages have search boxes that allow you to search the entire site. Keep in mind that sometimes they don’t work. As an example, a search for “ufkes” on the Franklin County, Nebraska, USGenWeb page http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nefrankl/ resulted in no hits. And yet there are two pages with that word: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nefrankl/fcltr/frank_1Page87.html http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nefrankl/fcltr/U_1.html The last page was located doing a search for “John Ufkes” at Rootsweb.com (http://www.rootsweb.com). The first page I located using a long trial and error process I won’t go into here. I think there is a problem with the linking, but it is just something to keep in mind. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Never make the assumption that “our family” never had any divorces. Married couples have had difficulty getting along since marriage began. Divorce is not one of those stories that always gets passed down in families. It is easier to “not pass” the story down if the marriage does not result in children or the divorced parties do not remarry. My third great-grandmother was divorced twice. My great-uncle was divorced from his wife and no one ever told anyone about it. I never would have thought to look for a divorce record except his death certificate indicated that he was divorced. Divorce records are usually kept with the county records. Give them a look. You never know what you will find out. And remember, even a divorce record on […]
Have you posted to the message boards at Ancestry/Rootsweb or other genealogy sites and not looked at your message in a while? Have you gotten a response? Remember that even if the site allows you to be notified of a response, that response might have gotten stuck in your spam filter. Also some users don’t view the “old” posts because they are concerned that the emails are out of date, etc. Consider re-posting messages to boards with updates in your information, etc. New people are getting into genealogy every day and there may be new relatives just waiting to be found on the message boards. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Have you reviewed information you found early in your research? Perhaps you entered data without really analyzing it or copied only parts of a document or a book without realizing that there was more? Are there any conclusions you reached early in your research that you are “sticking” to, even though you should go back and analyze them now that you know more?I have copies of court records in my files, where I now realize that I only copied part of the record, what I thought was important when I was first starting my research. Now I realize that there might be more. If you have not done it, it may be worth your time to revisit some things you “discovered” when you first started. ———————————— Check out […]
Some online databases are “works in progress.” Ancestry.com, Footnote, GenealogyBank and other sites offer wonderful data, but some databases are not complete before they are posted. Ususally this information is somewhere on the site, but it may not be obvious initially. Footnote.com is pretty good about showing users their “green status bar” that indicates what percentage of records have been uploaded. Ancestry will usually show what areas and records are in a database, but one has to scroll past the search screen to get to it. FamilySearch also indicates when databases are incomplete. Make certain you know how complete something is before searching it. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
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