Deeds and other land transactions are usually recorded in the local county recorder’s office. This office may have other land-related records as well, particularly records of surveys and plats. These maps created by surveyors may have been done when an area was first being settled, when a new subdivision or a town or village was created, or when heirs were partitioning out an estate.
We are starting up another section of my popular “Organizing Genealogical Information” class this month. Consider joining us. Details have been posted here.
Newspaper accounts of a death may give details that are not mentioned in the death certificate. It is doubtful that this 1923 suicide, made in response to harassing telephone calls, mentions those calls. This item was obtained on GenealogyBank.
The dog is painfully aware of the cone she has on her head. Her caretakers are painfully aware that she can’t see as easily with it on. Researchers often have their own cone–one that they’ve had forever. Sometimes it’s helpful to ask if we are using our peripheral vision, looking at all the angles and any assumptions we may have about the people being researched. It will be very clear to the dog when her cone comes off. Can we say the same about ours?
If part of your analysis of a record involves the word “always,” ask yourself: is that really “always” the way it is? could this situation be an exception? (make certain you have valid reasons for thinking that this case is an exception) how do I know it’s “always” true? Sometimes our brick walls and assumptions are buried in an “always” in our analysis that’s not necessarily always true.
When transcribing documents, use “sic” to indicate something that was wrong in the original or looks incorrect. That indicates to the reader of your transcription that the item was copied exactly as written. to my son Alexandra[sic] I give to my deceased[sic] wife The word “sic” is usually placed in brackets and italicized after the “erroneous” word. Don’t just correct the spelling or the word. What you think is correct may not be correct after all.
When analyzing information from a tombstone, try and determine if it was erected relatively contemporary to the death or if it was placed on the grave some time after. If the stone was put up fifty years after the person died, the information may not be as accurate as if it was put up with in a year of the person’s demise. Birth dates on tombstones for people who die at an advanced age can easily be incorrect whether the stone was erected contemporary to the death or not
We have scheduled another series of webinars on the probate materials at Ancestry.com and have rescheduled the “Preserving Past You” webinar for 3 October. More details can be seen on our blog post.
In this census enumeration John DeMoss is listed as “John Daymoss.” Chances are this spelling variant is making a comment about how the name was said. Are you looking for pronunciation clues in spelling “errors?”
Even if you use an online tree for a “clue” and never intend on publishing that fact unless you can find separate documentation, you should still cite that clue–at least so that you personally know from where the clue was obtained. It’s hard to know how much time should be devoted to following up on a clue if one does not know from where the clue was obtained. Clues from thin air are difficult to use.
Your genealogical goals should be to discover as much as you can about your ancestor using all records at your disposal (not just those that agree with you) and trying to represent those records and what they say as accurately as possible. And sometimes that might not be what we actually want to find out.
Never assume that those “boarders” in a census entry are merely strangers taken in for extra income. Those boarders could be relatives as well. Sometimes the census focuses on the “financial” relationship and not the biological one. Always do a little snooping on those boarders living with your ancestor.
Your ancestor may have not known exactly when he was born. I recently read through a Civil War pension application where the veteran was not certain of his year of birth. He made that same statement repeatedly throughout his pension paperwork. He knew that he was born in the very late 1830s, but that was ever as specific as he could get. It is possible that your relative really did not know his precise date of birth, especially if he was born on the frontier and family effects were somehow lost or destroyed at some point in time.
Genealogists spend a great deal of time documenting the long-since deceased that we sometimes forget those who are living. Are you collecting “modern” information that will help to provide future generations with a picture of those who lived in the past. This brief conversation was from September of 2013 and ended with a comment that is so typical of my mother that I could almost hear her say it when I read it. Make certain you aren’t just documenting the “ancient past.” The recent past can be just as interesting even if your conversations are not animals that cannot behave.
Ancestry.com recently released an update of their US yearbook collection. To have a smaller image that I could more easily use, I cropped the portion of the page that included my mother–removing the other pictures and “sliding” Mom’s picture closer to the names. No wording was changed and nothing about Mom’s picture was changed. My “source citation” for the image includes the fact that the image has been cropped from the original. Do you indicate that you have made alterations to an image?
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