If you’ve located an entry in local marriage records that a license was issued for your ancestor, have you determined if the license was returned? The issuance of a license means only that a license was issued and that a couple was intending to get married. Usually cancelled licenses are returned and “cancelled” is written somewhere on or near the entry in the record indicating the license was issued. But not always. Sometimes they are just not returned. Sometimes licenses that are used are not returned by the officiant, even if the marriage took place.
We’re moving to a WordPress blog on our own domain name. We’ll be in flux for a while–so the layout and other details may change as we find our way here. We’ve got some things to learn, but decided to just move instead of waiting until I knew everything about WordPress. We hope you like our new site, our new format, and the layout. Comments can be sent to me at mjnrootdig@gmail.com. The tips will keep coming every day, just like they always have. Make certain you get on our new list as the one we used on Blogger will be discontinued shortly.
The middle entry on this page of 1838 baptisms from Aurich, Germany contains the entry for my ancestor. The fourth column contains the names of the sponsors. When I was trying to analyze the entry for my relative I thought the symbol in the middle red circle on the image were a part of the entry. Then I looked at the other two entries on the image I made and realized that the items in the circle were partially used to number each entry and were not a part of the names of the sponsors. If I had only copied the entry for my ancestor and not other entries on the same page, I might have missed that. Don’t copy only the entry of interest on a page […]
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Before you leave for a remote courthouse or research facility, determine their hours, copy policies, digital camera policy, etc. Better to know before you leave than after you get there.
When was the last time you went back and took a look at documents and photographs you’ve not really analyzed in years? Are there clues sitting there? Clues that you never noticed because your research skills were not as developed? Clues that you didn’t realize were clues because you didn’t know much about the family? Clues that you didn’t notice because you simply overlooked them? The chicken is this picture wasn’t crucial to my research, but it reminded me that it never hurts to take another look.
The notice regarding the returning home of the 78th Illinois indicated that they were leaving on the 10th “instant.” That means “this month” and is sometimes abbreviated “inst.”
For twenty years, it seemed as if my ancestor Ira Sargent was dropped off by a UFO in Hancock County, Illinois, in 1880. Turns out he wasn’t. He was in the 1850 and 1860 United States Census listed under the last name of his step-father–whom his mother had married in 1849. Until I discovered the last name of the step-father, I was unable to find Ira. Is it possible that your UFO ancestor wasn’t dropped off by aliens but was instead listed in records as a child under his (or her) stepfather’s last name? And that the first time they used their “birth name” in a record was when they married?
Among the items that newspapers may include are accounts of accidents or injuries. An accident could have been significant for your family. If the breadwinner of the household was seriously or permanently injured, it could have put the family’s life in disarray and could have been the cause of unavoidable family separation.
Make a chart with all your variant spellings for a surname and their corresponding Soundex codes. You don’t need the Soundex code to search, but the chart can be sorted by Soundex when preforming Soundex based searches so that you will know which searches locate what names so that you don’t needlessly perform the same search. After all, Trantvetter and Trontvetter have the same Soundex code. A Soundex search for Trantvetter will find Trontvetter.
If a relative appears to have gotten married for the first time at a slightly older than normal age, look again. That first marriage might not have been the actual first marriage.
If you are fortunate enough to find a biography of an ancestor, consider creating a chronology from the events and dates it contains. This can be an excellent organizational tool as biographies do not always list events in chronological order and thinking about how every event in the biography fits into a larger timeline can be helpful. Be certain to include all events–ones stated directly and ones stated indirectly The same approach can be used with obituaries.
Land records generally record the acquisition and disposition of land. Property tax records may indicate that the owner is deceased or that the widow or someone else is paying the taxes on the property. There may not be a deed transferring the ownership from the estate of the deceased to the heirs until years after their death. If you need to estimate a date of death for a land owner and death records are not extant, consider looking for a death clue in the property tax records.
When collecting family stories, try and get memories from as many family members as possible, not just one. Different family members may remember different details or different stories. And even when they do remember the same event, their perspectives on that event may differ. One is never enough if you can get more.
A friend and I were joking around on Facebook about using tire tracks in the snow as permanent evidence of something and it got me to thinking. Have I converted all my “evidence” into a more permanent format? While I obviously don’t have my information in the snow, some of it is stored in just as fragile of a way. Memories that are only in my head, photographs I have the only copy of, research conclusions that I’ve not written up. They could all easily be gone in a moment. When the snow melts, those tire tracks are gone–and so is the evidence that a vehicle passed through. Are there things you need to preserve before the sun comes out?
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