If you had relatives who were college graduates, have you contacted the school’s archives to see if they have information on your relative? You might not find a textbook like I did, but you never know until you try. Genealogy Tip of the Day is sponsored by GenealogyBank. Search NewsBank’s GenealogyBank for your ancestors.
Recent research reminded me of the importance of recognizing assumptions and validating what you “think you know.” I knew cousin William Ehmen was a Lutheran minister in Nebraska in the 1880s. I just assumed that he attended seminary as “a young men” before he was married. Wrong. He did not go to seminary until he was in his late twenties, had been married for seven years, and was already a father. He worked for the railroad for a time in Illinois and I learned he had lived in Mendota for a while–I assumed it was because he was working there for the railroad. No. He was attending seminary at what is now Wartburg College in Iowa. In the 1870s it was located in Mendota, Illinois. I didn’t know […]
Name spellings that interchange vowels with consonants (or the other way around), usually create spellings that have a different soundex code. A Soundex search for Chaney will not catch the Chaney spelling. The exceptions are for names that have more than three separate consonant sounds after the initial letter. Letters after the third consonant sound (after the first letter) are ignored in Soundex searches.
Review your conclusions. Take a second look at material you compiled early in your research. Be willing to question research your “finished” years ago. Admit mistakes when you make them. It’s not the end of the world. You should want your research to be correct. Genealogy is not a crusade to show your first conclusion was right no matter what. We all learn as we research and sometimes we learn that our first conclusion was not right.
Bondsmen should know the person for whom they are signing a bond. They probably trust them as well–or at least they should. The residences of bondsmen are potential clues as to the general area where the person for whom they signed the bond lived. Depending upon what you know–that could be helpful. In 1903, Herman Haase had two men serve as his bondsmen on his bond. Herman lived nearly twenty miles from where the estate’s property was located. His bondsmen lived near him–not near where the property was located–because they knew him.
County borders are important, but they are not the only ones that can change. Borders for smaller political jurisdictions, such as cities and townships, can change as well. My “Pennsylvania problem” required a knowledge of when the townships changed. In my case it was those borders that was the problem, not the county ones.
It’s rare to get pictures in newspaper clipping from this era, but there’s one for Philip Troutfetter in this 1902 account of his exploits. The newspaper also includes a few statements that have never been located in other records. It also somewhat incorrectly characterizes how he got the money from his mother-in-law and he was never completely prosecuted on the charges. To date, we have not located information on his supposed correspondent’s columns from Cuba either. This newspaper item was located on GenealogyBank. Search NewsBank’s GenealogyBank for your ancestors.
People do not live in alphabetical order. When viewing earlier records, determine if the records have been put in rough alphabetical order. That strips some of the geographic residential clues that some records provide. The names in this 1800 census all live in the same township, but are not necessarily “close” neighbors as the names have been grouped by initial letter of the last name.
Genealogy Tip of the Day is proudly sponsored by GenealogyBank. Please check out their current offer for Genealogy Tip of the Day fans. GenealogyBank has improved their search features and interface. One of the nicest features is the ability to perform keyword searches on specific sets of recent obituaries from selected newspapers.
Sometimes a census record is all we have to indicate that an ancestor lived until a certain point in time and that enumeration is often used as a “last alive on” date. Whenever I see an unsourced death date of 1800, 1810, etc. for an ancestor in an online tree or any reference, I wonder: did someone enter his death date as “after 1800” and did someone (or their software) strip the “after” from that date? Several genealogists indicate that a relative died in 1800–no source. The last census in which he is recorded is 1800. While I don’t use these unsourced dates of death in my own records, I still wonder if there is any credence to the year of death they have. Did they find something […]
Not everyone who owned land lived on it. Deeds of sale and acquisition may indicate where the property owner actually lived. Some property tax records (if still extant) may indicate properties that were owned by non-residents. Heirs may own property even after they have left an area and, in the early days of settlement, speculators may acquire larger amounts of property in hopes of turning a profit.
If your ancestor owned property, he somehow acquired it. If there is no apparent deed for him in the index of records, consider the following possibilities: your relative inherited the property and there was no actual deed of acquisition–the will served as the deed your ancestor’s name was spelled really incorrectly on the deed–minor spelling issues aside, this was usually not the case your ancestor acquired the property via a patent–which somehow never was recorded your ancestor’s deed simply did not get in the index the county boundary changed and the acquisition records are recorded in the county where the property was located at the time it was acquired the deed never was recorded you overlooked it in the index
I’m scheduling lectures and all-day seminars from now through 2020. If you’d like to have me present an all-day seminar for your group or organization, please look at my list of topics (more available upon request) and email me with information about your event for additional details.
Between Google searches, mindlessly surfing the internet, and websites that serve up results from numerous databases, it is easy to locate an image of a record and have no idea what that record is of. It’s important that you find out and not assume. There are several reasons, including: citations can’t be made if you don’t know what the record is you may have a cropped portion of the original image the record may be just one page in a multi-page document there may be other records generated as a part of the process that created the record you did find an image of Ask your genealogy colleagues, genealogy society members, genealogy Facebook group members, etc. what the record is of if you don’t know. Not asking and […]
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