Have you tried searching for that ancestral last name by cutting off part of it? Perhaps “De Moss” was entered as “Moss.” Perhaps Van der Walle was entered as just “Wall.” Goldenstein might have been entered as “Golden.” The list goes on. Consider what might have happened if someone dropped the first syllable or two of your ancestor’s last name. Then try the same for the last syllable or two. You might be surprised at what you find. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
In some states, older county records have been placed at the state archives. The state archives may even have created indexes to some of these older records. For any state where you have relatives, locate the website for the state archives (a google search for “yourstate state archives,” where yourstate is the state name will probably do the trick). You may be surprised what you find there. I located the divorce for my globetrotting relative Philip Troutfetter at the Colorado State Archives and am waiting for a copy. Never hurts to try. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
They put new carpet in my office at work. The drawback was that I had to take everything out. The upside was I “found” folders and papers I had forgotten about or mislaid. Do you have stacks of copies in your genealogy workspace that have been neglected? So you even know what is in those stacks? Go through and clean up your genealogy work area. At the very least you may be more efficient. At the very most you may find something you completely forgot you ever had. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Have you considered helping someone else with their genealogy? I’m not suggesting spending months of intense research. But have you considered: Offering to take pictures of stones in a nearby cemetery? This offer could be posted to a Rootsweb mailing list. Best to start with a small cemetery. Performing lookups in a book you have at home? Answering a query on a mailing list that does not relate to one of your families? Sometimes it feels good to just help someone else with their research. Sometimes it generates good “genealogy karma.” And sometimes when you help someone else, you learn something that later helps you with your own research. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
If you are stuck on an ancestor, you might consider hiring a professional to solve it for you. Sometimes this is cost prohibitive. Professional genealogists have bills to pay too and need to charge for their research services. However, some will do consulting work–where they read over your organized material and make suggestions. Sometimes that is all you need–suggestions of what to do next. I did this recently and it was exactly what I needed. Also I really just needed another set of eyes to look over what I had and make certain that I had not overlooked something. One warning. Organize your information first. Any professional receiving unorganized information will need to organize it. That takes time and increases the number of their billable hours. A plumber […]
Genealogists should be asking themselves “why?” whenever they locate a document. Sometimes the answer is easy. Death certificates are created because someone dies, marriage certificates are created because someone was married. Of course, vital records (and some other records) are kept for reasons somewhat unrelated to your ancestor’s existence. Wills are recorded because someone died and the estate needed to be settled. Guardianships are recorded because a parent died and left an estate and minor children. Deeds are recorded because land was sold. Sometimes deeds are recorded because the surviving spouse died and the property needed to be transferred. Sometimes this fact will not even be indicated on the deed. Anything that falls “outside normal parameters” should really cause you to ask “why?” My wife’s Roman Catholic ancestor […]
Do not limit your search for obituaries to just one newspaper. Your search may start with the newspaper closest to where your ancestor lived or died, but it should not end there. If your ancestor lived in an urban area, consider looking at other papers or suburban newspapers near where the ancestor lived. If your ancestor was in a rural area, look at nearby papers and always look at the newspaper from the county seat. Also consider foreign language or ethnic newspapers if your ancestor was an immigrant or the child of immigrants. Different newspapers do not alway give the exact same information. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
I do not have too much of my own ancestry posted in the public trees at Ancestry.com because I do not have time to answer all potential inquiries. However, I do have information posted in two public trees on two of my more problematic families. My hope is that the automatic search at Ancestry will locate something I have overlooked, or that a relative crawls out of the woodwork and contacts me. I’ve already had two relatives send me e-mail messages. The problem is that my responses are apparently not getting back to them. I have had three messages from different relatives in response to one of my trees. I sent return e-mails almost immediately. No response. Two replied to my tree again a few months later. Again […]
There is a “game” going around on Facebook where you pick the book nearest to you and type in the 5th full sentence on page 56. I learned something when I did it. The book I grabbed was Echo King’s Finding Answers in British Isles Census Records. King mentioned that in the 1841 UK Census enumerators were not requried to give full Christian names. I probably knew this at one point in time, but the remembering did not hurt me. While I’m not going to spend all day picking out pages at random to read, the exercise did remind me that every so often it is a good idea to pull out one of those references we have not read in a while and review a chapter or […]
Sometimes we can be tempted to not look at every record, thinking that we do not need it or that information it provides will only be the same as what we already have. Once I almost neglected locating a 1930 census entry for a family because “I didn’t need it.” Turns out I was wrong. It listed the “birth” name for a daughter, which ended up being a clue as to the name of the father’s mother. You just never know. And don’t assume that you do not need a record just because you “know everything.” ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
I was researching a relative in Champaign County, Illinois. A vertical file on the family contained a death notice from an undated, unsourced newspaper that indicated the relative was killed by a train. The only problem was that the newspaper clipping was a photocopy of the original. There was no reverse side I could look at for clues. There was just the clipping. I was concerned I would have a difficult time locating the person with just a clue that he died in Indiana. Then I remembered the deceased had an interest in an estate in the county where he lived. Researching court and probate records located a file settling up his estate. Included in those court records was a transcription of the coroner’s report from the Indiana […]
Originally I somehow overlooked 1 March 2009 when creating these daily posts. The tips are written in bunches, I don’t sit down every morning and crunch one out. However for some reason I originally overlooked 1 March 2009 and it brought something to mind: Are there gaps in a series of records you are using? Besides looking for a certain name, are you paying enough attention to make certain that there are entries for every year the records supposedly cover, every region, etc.? ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Find out the security policy of the courthouse before you make a trip there. I am in the habit of sometimes making notes about what to research in the notepad feature of my phone. Some courthouses will not let you bring your cell phone into the building. Find out any security issues before you leave. It is also a good idea to find out what kinds of electronic equipment generally are allowed. Best not to find out restrictions at the last minute. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Make certain you really research from the most recent and work your way to earlier events. For years, I assumed (incorrectly) that an uncle by marriage was only married one time–to my ancestor’s sister. Turns out she died young and he remarried shortly after her death and had the children with her instead of my aunt. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the first marriage took place after the 1880 census and no vital records were kept and both wives were dead by the 1900 census. ———————————— Check out GenealogyBank’s Offer for Tip of the Day Fans!
Virtually any pre-1920 deed or will written in a book at the courthouse is not the original. The grantee got the original deed and the courthouse made a handwritten copy. As technology developed, microfilm copies, photostatic and other kinds of copies were made. But that deed from 1850 that you found in a book with all the others, it was a handwritten copy and could contain an error or two. Wills recorded in a will record book are the same way. Of course, the original will may be in the packet of estate papers, but anything “recorded” before photocopies and the like was a handwritten transcription. Just a little something to keep in mind the next time you make a copy of a will from 1820. ———————————— Check […]
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