A witness to a document is stating that the individual who signed the document looked like they were of sound mind and it appeared that they were acting of their own volition and not under any influence of another person or substance. Witnesses to a document may have known your ancestor. Witnesses to a document may have been related to your ancestor. Witnesses may have been just another warm body in the Justice of the Peace’s office at the same time as your ancestor. Witnesses do not have to be related to your ancestor and they don’t have to be “friends” with your ancestor. They could be, but they do not have to be. Keep that in mind. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day […]
An 1830 document indicates your ancestor is an infant and has a guardian appointed for him. The next year the ancestor marries. What gives? What gives is that an “infant” in the legal sense is someone who is under the age of majority. While that can vary from state to state and has changed over time, it typically is 18 for females and 21 for males. So your ancestor could be 15 years old and be an infant. Just something to keep in mind. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Locating a divorce record gave me a new spelling for my grandmother’s maiden name of Trautvetter. The new (to me) variant is “troutfitter.” I performed a google search for the name, finding many references. Most of the sites had to do with fishing and I was initially confused. It took me a few minutes before I realized most of the “troutfitter” references were a play on the words “trout” and “outfitter.” Then it made sense, but I also realized that for the majority of the pages I located “troutfitter” was not based upon someone’s name. Oh well. Remember that there is a word outside of genealogy. I will still look for Troutfitter (and Trautfitter) references, but won’t assume they all have to do with with the last name. […]
They put new carpet in my office at work. The drawback was that I had to take everything out. The upside was I “found” folders and papers I had forgotten about or mislaid. Do you have stacks of copies in your genealogy workspace that have been neglected? So you even know what is in those stacks? Go through and clean up your genealogy work area. At the very least you may be more efficient. At the very most you may find something you completely forgot you ever had. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Have you considered helping someone else with their genealogy? I’m not suggesting spending months of intense research. But have you considered: Offering to take pictures of stones in a nearby cemetery? This offer could be posted to a Rootsweb mailing list. Best to start with a small cemetery. Performing lookups in a book you have at home? Answering a query on a mailing list that does not relate to one of your families? Sometimes it feels good to just help someone else with their research. Sometimes it generates good “genealogy karma.” And sometimes when you help someone else, you learn something that later helps you with your own research. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Genealogists should be asking themselves “why?” whenever they locate a document. Sometimes the answer is easy. Death certificates are created because someone dies, marriage certificates are created because someone was married. Of course, vital records (and some other records) are kept for reasons somewhat unrelated to your ancestor’s existence. Wills are recorded because someone died and the estate needed to be settled. Guardianships are recorded because a parent died and left an estate and minor children. Deeds are recorded because land was sold. Sometimes deeds are recorded because the surviving spouse died and the property needed to be transferred. Sometimes this fact will not even be indicated on the deed. Anything that falls “outside normal parameters” should really cause you to ask “why?” My wife’s Roman Catholic ancestor […]
I do not have too much of my own ancestry posted in the public trees at Ancestry.com because I do not have time to answer all potential inquiries. However, I do have information posted in two public trees on two of my more problematic families. My hope is that the automatic search at Ancestry will locate something I have overlooked, or that a relative crawls out of the woodwork and contacts me. I’ve already had two relatives send me e-mail messages. The problem is that my responses are apparently not getting back to them. I have had three messages from different relatives in response to one of my trees. I sent return e-mails almost immediately. No response. Two replied to my tree again a few months later. Again […]
There is a “game” going around on Facebook where you pick the book nearest to you and type in the 5th full sentence on page 56. I learned something when I did it. The book I grabbed was Echo King’s Finding Answers in British Isles Census Records. King mentioned that in the 1841 UK Census enumerators were not requried to give full Christian names. I probably knew this at one point in time, but the remembering did not hurt me. While I’m not going to spend all day picking out pages at random to read, the exercise did remind me that every so often it is a good idea to pull out one of those references we have not read in a while and review a chapter or […]
Sometimes we can be tempted to not look at every record, thinking that we do not need it or that information it provides will only be the same as what we already have. Once I almost neglected locating a 1930 census entry for a family because “I didn’t need it.” Turns out I was wrong. It listed the “birth” name for a daughter, which ended up being a clue as to the name of the father’s mother. You just never know. And don’t assume that you do not need a record just because you “know everything.” ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
I was researching a relative in Champaign County, Illinois. A vertical file on the family contained a death notice from an undated, unsourced newspaper that indicated the relative was killed by a train. The only problem was that the newspaper clipping was a photocopy of the original. There was no reverse side I could look at for clues. There was just the clipping. I was concerned I would have a difficult time locating the person with just a clue that he died in Indiana. Then I remembered the deceased had an interest in an estate in the county where he lived. Researching court and probate records located a file settling up his estate. Included in those court records was a transcription of the coroner’s report from the Indiana […]
Originally I somehow overlooked 1 March 2009 when creating these daily posts. The tips are written in bunches, I don’t sit down every morning and crunch one out. However for some reason I originally overlooked 1 March 2009 and it brought something to mind: Are there gaps in a series of records you are using? Besides looking for a certain name, are you paying enough attention to make certain that there are entries for every year the records supposedly cover, every region, etc.? ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Find out the security policy of the courthouse before you make a trip there. I am in the habit of sometimes making notes about what to research in the notepad feature of my phone. Some courthouses will not let you bring your cell phone into the building. Find out any security issues before you leave. It is also a good idea to find out what kinds of electronic equipment generally are allowed. Best not to find out restrictions at the last minute. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Make certain you really research from the most recent and work your way to earlier events. For years, I assumed (incorrectly) that an uncle by marriage was only married one time–to my ancestor’s sister. Turns out she died young and he remarried shortly after her death and had the children with her instead of my aunt. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the first marriage took place after the 1880 census and no vital records were kept and both wives were dead by the 1900 census. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Virtually any pre-1920 deed or will written in a book at the courthouse is not the original. The grantee got the original deed and the courthouse made a handwritten copy. As technology developed, microfilm copies, photostatic and other kinds of copies were made. But that deed from 1850 that you found in a book with all the others, it was a handwritten copy and could contain an error or two. Wills recorded in a will record book are the same way. Of course, the original will may be in the packet of estate papers, but anything “recorded” before photocopies and the like was a handwritten transcription. Just a little something to keep in mind the next time you make a copy of a will from 1820. ———————————— Check […]
It has been about ten years, but there used to be a local band named “DOS GUYS.” There were three ways one could take this: DOS Guys meaning 2 guys from “dos,” Spanish for two. DOS Guys as a way of saying “those” guys, “dos” as a slang way of saying “those.” DOS Guys, meaning guys who were still using the DOS operating system on their computer. Is there something that could be interpreted more than one way? Have you “jumped” on one interpretation that may be the wrong one? It may be that you are creating your own brick wall by doing so. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
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