In any jurisdiction, determine how many courts heard cases during the time period your ancestor lived there. There may be one court that hears probate or estate matters, another that hears guardianships, one that hears criminal cases, one that hears equity cases, etc. It can be easy to overlook records if you do not do that. The FamilySearch wiki is one place to start learning about these records, but also reach out to local researchers, genealogical and historical societies for additional information. Questions to ask are: what court heard divorces? what court heard foreclosures? what court settled probate matters? what court heard property disputes? what court heard guardianship matters? and so on. Search NewsBank’s GenealogyBank for your ancestors.
This tip was originally published in 2010. It is still good advice. I have been reading First Generations: Women in Colonial America for the past several days. It has given me some insight into the Colonial experience of women and cause to think about a few things in ways I never have. Is there a history text or sociological study that might expand your knowledge even if it doesn’t directly expand your family tree? Search NewsBank’s GenealogyBank for your ancestors.
Reading newspapers to get historical background is an excellent idea. However, it is important to remember that media in the 19th century was subject to the same dilemmas that media sometimes is today. As a result, some newspapers were biased in one way or another or reported things before they had been adequately fact checked. Also remember that newspapers may have published follow-up articles or corrections days or weeks after an original story saw the printed page. Some newspapers tried to be as independent and unbiased as they could be, but things still could slip in. If reading for historical background of the area, read more than just one newspaper to get a broader view–and to potentially catch additional ancestral references.
There are things that researchers will not be able to pinpoint precisely. No record might exist that provides great-grandfather’s exact date of birth–and March of 1874 may be as specific as you are going to get. In some locations and time periods, the best you may be able to do is approximate a year of birth. Other researchers may wonder where you got that precise birth date when there are not many records…so be prepared to have a source. It may also not be possible to know where an ancestral event took place. Again, if there are no records determining locations may require the researcher to admit that only a general area of where the event took place may ever be known. My ancestor who was born in […]
When you see a newspaper reference to a family social event where relatives are named (bridal shower, baby shower, wedding, etc.) do you think of who you would expect to be there that is not listed? People don’t attend for a variety of reasons, but if a certain relative is never in attendance it might be something worth looking into. Search NewsBank’s GenealogyBank for your ancestors.
Every census has an official census “date.” This is the date as of which all questions are to be answered. The problem is that sometimes the census is not taken on that date and people confuse the “real” date with the “census” date. And some genealogists forget that the date the census information was gathered, which is sometimes listed on the page, is not necessarily the census date.
The employe’s[sic] record card was from the early 20th century. The spelling of employee was not one I was used to. Before I assumed it was wrong, I did some looking because the longer I research, the more I realize that I was not alive 100 years ago and there are many things that happened before my lifetime of which I am unaware. The use of “employe” is one of them. For spellings, a dictionary should be my first stop. It was not. In this case, I looked at digital images of contemporary newspapers and published books for references to employee spelled with only one “e” at the end. There were many and more than enough to indicate the usage was not unusual during the very early 20th […]
We have 100 free Genealogy Tip of the Day magnets to give away. Send your mailing address to us at genealogytiportwooftheday@gmail.com 1 magnet per address. I’ve exhausted my international budget, so for now we’re limiting these to US addresses only.
Per stirpes means “per branch.” The phrase is often used in wills and other estate records to indicate how property is to be divided if some beneficiaries pre-decease the original writer of the will or owner of the property. A relative has three children and in their will gives their estate to their children or to their children’s descendants per stirpes. Let’s say the relative, named A has three children, B, C, and D. B has two children, C has three children, and D has four children. A dies and B, C, and D have already passed. All the grandchildren of A are living when they die. B, C, and D, had they been living, would have each received 1/3 of A’s estate. That’s how much each group […]
This may seem obvious and it is but based on my emails and personal experience, it bears repeating. Reading an entire document, record, article, etc. before jumping to conclusions, researching, or commenting is advised. This cuts down on research mistakes, creating brick walls where none existed, and making comments that make no sense. Also giving yourself time to let information digest before moving forward on it is advised as well. Slow down. Your deceased relatives are not going anywhere, but haste in your research may make you look for them in the wrong place. Search NewsBank’s GenealogyBank for your ancestors.
There’s a picture of my Mom in a photo album that belonged to her grandmother. There is no writing on the picture. Several other pictures on the page have the year 1949 written on them in handwriting that appears to be that of my mother’s aunt. My mother appears at the very least to be 10 years old in the picture and probably older. Which evidence is stronger for when the picture was approximately taken? Often in genealogical research we find information that conflicts. The key is to find all relevant information and sources that may provide information about something which we would like to know. Then we can evaluate all that evidence and decide which evidence should be given more credence. In this case, the appearance of […]
Dating photographs can be difficult. If you have an idea of when a photograph was taken, indicate how you arrived at that date. Was it because the photograph was in an album and other items on the same page had dates written on them or were able to be dated easily based on events in the photographs? Was it because someone wrote the date on the photograph? Do you know whose handwriting that was? If you are using a printed date on the photograph from the facility that printed the photograph, remember that date is the date of printing–not when it was taken. If the date can be estimated by physical items in the photograph (ie.a car), indicate how you determined the date of that physical item. If […]
Remember that family history is not a contest to see who gets the most names. Try and learn personal details about your individual ancestors and relatives. Newspapers, court records, military records, pension records, etc. are all great places to find out some of these details. Other sources may provide some historical context and information about your ancestor’s occupation and lifestyle. Learning those other details helps you to get a more complete picture of your relative. It also increases the chance that you do locate information on their parents.
I have a photograph of my great-great-grandparents taken around 1900 on the front porch of their home with all their children. The individuals are all identified in a reprint of the photograph that was done in the family genealogy published in 1986. I’m fortunate to know who they are. But I’m not certain exactly how I came to have the photograph. I have documented how other items came into my possession, but I’ve realized that I have things whose acquisition I’ve not documented sufficiently. The easiest way to document acquisition is to keep the items organized by how and when they were obtained and notate where you received them from. That “how you got it” is especially important for photographs that are unidentified.
Many times genealogy success is not about using the latest website or the latest iteration of “research the neighborhood” with new verbiage thrown in. It’s about doing all the tedious grunt work of searching every record you can. Reading through forty family reunion announcements got to be repetitive and nearly mind-numbing. But there was one reference to a couple that indicated they may have had a child. This child was not listed in any other reunion reference to these people. Further research indicated the couple had a child who did not live long…a child that was rarely mentioned after the fact. A search of an ancestor’s long sequence of mortgages indicated there was one to his in-laws that eventually revealed some family drama of which I was unaware. […]
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