When using any record or database, ask yourself: how does someone get in this material? Do they have to live in a certain place? Do they have to own property? Do they have to have a job? Do they have to be dead? Do they have to be a member of a specific religion? Do they have to be a certain gender? Do they have to be a certain age? Do they have to have a certain marital status? Do they have to be a veteran? If you don’t know how someone gets into a record, database, or finding aid, it is difficult to use it effectively.
It never hurts to read over your conclusions more than once. Anyone can make typographical errors and those errors can run from ones that are irritating in a minor way (spelling “Burbon” when you mean “Bourbon”) to ones that restate facts (mixing up a father and a son). Even if the typographical errors have been removed and the facts are straight, have someone else look at your writing. They may catch errors you don’t–particularly conclusions that may not be clear or phrases that don’t convey quite the message you think they do.
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For your ancestor’s residence, do you know all the political borders near their property? There may be borders at a variety of political levels and that impacts what records were created, where they are held, and even if they are extant. Were they members of a religious denomination that had ecclesiastical borders that impacted where they went to church and where those records are kept? Borders between cultures and languages are fluid, but those are good ones to know about as well–particularly how far did your ancestor have to travel before the common language(s) changed?
Military pension files may contain transcribed record copies of documents that you cannot find elsewhere–perhaps because the courthouse burned, the records are unindexed or you simply do not know were to look. Pension files for widows should contain proof of marriage. If the soldier was survived by minor children (usually for pension purposes under the age of 16), information about their birth may be in the file. And you just never know what may be in a pension file–you may even find an 1860 census record.
I recently obtained digital images of a Union Civil War pension file of a relative by marriage. It took over 200 images to digitize all the records. My interest in the file was to see if there was information on the claim of the widow and what information she had provided on herself. Having seen quite a few pension files, I knew where to look for the “good stuff.” There should be documents with “WIdow’s Declaration” or similar phrases at the top in large black letters. I zipped through the files and didn’t see any such statements. I nearly concluded there wasn’t anything on the widow in the file. A slower, page by page, reading located information on the widow and her claim in letters that at first […]
When you find records of your ancestor that indicate he or she “made out a statement” before an official, try and determine where your ancestor lived at the time and where that official was authorized to act and where the statement was witnessed or acknowledged. An 1868 statement signed by my ancestor who was living in Hancock County, Illinois, was acknowledged before a Justice of the Peace in Linn County, Iowa. In this case, it was not a huge clue but it did document his travel there to assist in the settling up his mother’s estate. Some times knowing that a person traveled from one place to another is a big clue. Other times it is not. But looking at details in document for all the little things […]
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When someone does not come up in an index, here are some things to think about: have you considered all alternate spellings? have you double checked what you put in the search boxes (right names in right boxes, no boxes with information from “old searches,” etc.)? could the person be in the record under a different last name (step-father, new husband, etc.)? have you used wildcards to expand your searches? do you know the index is complete or is it in “process?” are you certain the person really should be in the record? do you know how the original records were organized and preserved? have you performed a manual search of the records? have you asked someone else for a suggestion?
In most US census records when an individual is indicated as working on their “own account,” it generally means that they are not an employee and that they do not employ others as well. Learn more about US census instructions on the US Census Bureau website.
I do it myself and I see it countless times on the internet in postings and responses to postings: failure to completely read something and every little word of it Before you react to a document, interpret it, analyze it, and decide “where to go next,” make certain you have read every line of the document. Don’t just react to the “big” obvious things as it often is the details that seem trivial that can be the most important. Better yet…don’t react immediately at all. That’s when some of the biggest mistakes are made and the biggest clues overlooked.
Local newspapers are not the only place to look for ancestral tidbits. In December of 1916, Albert Cawiezell of Davenport, Iowa, advertised that he was willing to exchange one 22 caliber rifle for skunks or ferrets. Aside from the colorful reference, it indicated where Cawiezell was living at the time the advertisement was placed. In some situations that could be a big clue. Cawiezell didn’t want just any skunks. He wanted scentless skunks.
There’s an online anonymous list of four generations of descendants of an ancestor of mine who died in Kentucky in the 1840s. I’ve used it as a clue to names and relationships. It does have errors–there are death dates that I can’t validate, locations of events that are completely incorrect, incomplete lists of children, and marriages that were not discovered. The names of the beginning ancestor’s parents cannot be validated with any record whatsoever, but the relationships in the succeeding generations were pretty much on the mark-aside from a few children who apparently were overlooked. It was not perfect. But it gave me an outline to use as a starting point. It did not give me a tree to copy without questioning any of it.
When searching old newspapers for obituaries, consider searching for the woman’s maiden name. The 1931 obituary of Sarah Graves in a Macon, Missouri, newspaper refers to her twice: once as Mrs. Thomas M. Graves and once as Sarah Ellen Newman (her maiden name). About every other reference to her is “she.” Not all obituaries will list a woman the way Sarah is in this obituary, but it was a common practice during this time period. Searching for parents’ names as well may be a good idea–even if they had been dead for fifty years and had never lived in the area.
Always search for people in newspapers where they never lived–especially if you think they had relatives who lived there. References to them visiting may provide significant relationship clues. Remember that papers in towns where they were visiting may get details incorrect, particularly about the person from out of town. Nancy was actually a Mrs. (widowed to be precise) and technically in 1901 had not moved to the big town of West Point, Illinois, yet and was still living closer to Breckenridge.
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