{"id":14865,"date":"2022-03-06T08:30:50","date_gmt":"2022-03-06T14:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=14865"},"modified":"2022-03-06T08:30:50","modified_gmt":"2022-03-06T14:30:50","slug":"brainstorm-then-get-real-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/06\/brainstorm-then-get-real-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Brainstorm&#8211;Then Get Real"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If a document or record does not make any sense, if someone seems to appear out of nowhere, if someone seems to disappear without a trace, brainstorm on all the possible things that could have been going on at the time. Make a list. Don&#8217;t worry about how likely or realistic they are. Then, when you are completely out of ideas, think about:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>the ones that are too far-fetched or unrealistic&#8211;I eliminate these first.<\/li><li>the ones you could never prove<\/li><li>the ones that are the most likely<\/li><li>the ones that might have left records.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The four categories above are not mutually exclusive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Start with the situations that are most likely and might have left behind some sort of record. Work to find those records, but remember you are looking to find <em>any and all <\/em>information that was left behind&#8211;not just that which your most likely hypothesis about what happened. Research is about locating all available material and analyzing it&#8211;not only finding what proves you were right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Brainstorming is good. Sometimes we need to think through totally crazy possibilities to get at other \u00a0more realistic ones we might have overlooked.<br>And occasionally the crazy situation is what happened. The reality is less dramatic&#8211;but no less interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Learn more about <em><a href=\"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/genealogy-tip-of-the-day-book\/\">Genealogy Tip of the Day<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/genealogy-tip-of-the-day-book\/\">&#8211;the book<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If a document or record does not make any sense, if someone seems to appear out of nowhere, if someone seems to disappear without a trace, brainstorm on all the possible things that could have been going on at the time. Make a list. Don&#8217;t worry about how likely or realistic they are. Then, when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153978,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153978"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}