It can be so tempting. A search for your ancestor on a website turns up with his ancestry back five generations. There it is all compiled and easily downloadable in a file that can be imported into our own database. In a word, no. I have located many ancestors in these online files with generations of their ancestry. In some cases, I use this files as clues. Not as facts. If I import someone’s information into my file, separating the information out is nearly impossible. Not all submitters are careful about the accuracy of their information. Just this week I found an online compilation with the ancestors of a first cousin of my great-grandmother. This compilation contained people dying before they had children, parents who with birthdates after […]
If you cannot find deeds or records of an estate settlement for your ancestor, look for a partition suit. These suits were filed usually when the heirs could not agree on how a farm or piece of real estate could be equitably partitioned out amongst the heirs. These court cases will be filed in the county courthouse with other court records. They typically show how the deceased obtained their property, when they died, and who their heirs were. All are good clues for the genealogist. I always look for partitions, but they can be particularly interesting if a relative died with no descendants. That’s when all the relatives come out of the woodwork. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
No doubt a good digital image is a great rendering of a document that may be difficult to read. However, it still is to your advantage to transcribe documents if at all possible, even if you have digital copies. Transcribing a document forces you to look at every word, perhaps a word you overlooked in quickly reading the document. And there are still times where sharing a typed up transcription may be easier than an image. When you type that document, think about what every word means. Think about what every phrase means. There may be a term upon which your research may hinge. And when you do not know what a word means, look it up. It may make all the difference. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer […]
Have you written your own story? Many genealogists spend so much time obtaining information on dead relatives and interviewing living ones that they neglect themselves? Think about the things you wish your ancestors could tell you? Why they moved; why the voted; what they thought about certain events in their lives. And when you have a list of things you wish your ancestors could tell you….answer those questions about yourself. Or at least the ones that apply to you. If you describe your Civil War service to your descendants they might not be inclined to believe much of what you say about anything else (smirk). ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Are you only using certain records in your search? Are there souces you do not use because you think they are too difficult to use or because you are unfamiliar with them? If so, you may be limiting the amount of information you find and leaving a significant part of your ancestor’s story untold. Ignoring deeds if your ancestors were farmers is a mistake, land records may provide migration and other clues not evidenced in other records. Even city dwellers might have owned a small city lot and how that lot was dealt with after the owner’s death could provide you with good information. And assuming your ancestors weren’t the kind of people to end up in court records is a bad one to make. Over half of […]
Some family traditions are more true than others. The problem is proving them. My usual approach for dealing with family traditions is to break them into the things that (if true) might have created a record or document and those things that probably did not leave any record.Then I focus on trying to prove or disprove the parts of the story that I can. Often the family tradition is mostly false, but sometimes there is a grain of truth in there somewhere. I find that breaking it up into “possibly provable” and “probably not provable” a good way to start working on the tradition. There is an old article on the Ancestry.com site I wrote on this topic. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day […]
I am a big believer in studying migration chains. Your ancestor did not just arbitrarily move from point A to point B. Chances are someone encouraged him to move, or sent him a letter telling him how good it was in the new area, etc. Even if there was not someone from “home” living in his new destination when he arrived, chances are someone from “home” came out to settle where he did after he was there. My wife and I have over twenty ancestral families who came from Europe in the mid-19th century. All of them (save one) came where they knew someone or else had someone come over from Europe after they did. And even those families moving across the US moved as part of a […]
Did you do any thinking to reach that genealogical conclusion about a parentage or a date? Did you analyze several documents to reach a decision about what they meant? If so, is that chain of thought somewhere in your database? Human memories are particularly frail and writing it out somewhere increases the chance your logic and thought process gets preserved. And remember that you could later realize you were wrong. It is hard to see an error in your line of thought if it was never written down anywhere. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
While it is not really a genealogy tip, it is a good one anyway. When doing your research, consider turing “off” the email and some of the other “constantly on” computer applications that demand attention. Consider even getting away from the computer, unless you are searching online sites. Sometimes the constant distraction can negatively impact your concentration. Researching with several other tasks going on in the background can cause us to overlook the obvious. Sometimes multitasking is not as efficient as we think it is. Some research tasks require concentration, whether it be reading a foreign language or analyzing 1840 census returns. Do your research a favor the next time you are working and give it your full attention. You might surprise yourself at how much you accomplish. […]
One of the best ways to organize information and see what is lacking in your research is to write up the information you already have. Prove each point or statement as you work along. You would be amazed at the amount of information you have or at how little you actually do have. I write up families all the time for various articles or columns I am working on. It is one of the best ways to really get you looking more closely at your research. Writing for someone else to understand makes you think about things on a different level. It may help you notice gaps or errors in your own research. And if the finished product looks good to you, consider submitting it for publication in […]
Keep in mind the difference between the date a document is executed and the date it is recorded. The date a document is executed is usually the day it is signed and becomes effective. The date of recording is the date the document is recorded officially at the courthouse. Documents cannot be recorded before they are executed, but there is no law that they have to be recorded within specific time frame. Deeds may be recorded years after they are written. This is more likely to happen if a family goes to sell a piece of property and realizes the deceased owner never had his or her original deed recorded. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
When interpreting a deceased ancestor or relative’s actions, consider that they probably operated from a slightly different prespective. There are several important things to consider about your ancestor when trying to figure out what he or she did or why he or she acted in a given way. What was your ancestor’s educational level? What was his or her economic status at that point in time? What were their family obligations at that point in time? Was the ancestor isolated or did she have family support? Was your ancestor widowed with three children and no means of support? Did your ancestor have psychological or emotional problems? Was there a subtance abuse problem? Was your ancestor hiding something? How much do you know about your ancestor’s “context?” Keep in […]
When using any published compilation, abstract, or finding aid, read the preface (or introduction, etc.). This is where the author should indicate if the original records were incomplete or if there were issues or difficulties reading and transcribing the original record. In some online databases, this information may appear in a “more about,” or “frequently asked questions” page. Not knowing what a book or database does not contain may cause you to think you searched something when you did not. The preface of a book of marriage records from 1829-1900 may indicate that records from 1850-1860 are missing. That is something you need to know when using that publication. If you do not read the preface, you may never know. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of […]
I don’t normally mention websites here on “tip of the day,” but will mention Archive.org as there is a great deal of free material on this site. I found five scanned books from Hancock County, Illinois, on the site. These books can be viewed as text files (there will be some OCR errors), PDF, DjVu, or FlipBook files. The amount of material on here is amazing. The fact that I can download entire county histories is just amazing. The viewer options here put Ancestry.com to shame. For more information view www.archive.org ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
There are times when I need to chart out relationships within a family–without printing the entire tree or even the entire family group. I just need a few people. And sometimes doing that on a computer takes up too much time. A pencil and paper gets the job done faster and I can get to actual research. There are other times where actually just “scratching” things out on paper is faster. Do you need a computer for every task? Is there something you could do on paper and pencil in five minutes that would take you 5 hours on the computer? Remember that you are not always creating layout for a magazine or publication. Sometimes you are just making a working chart for yourself and your own use. […]
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