{"id":32728,"date":"2026-04-13T10:05:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=32728"},"modified":"2026-04-13T10:05:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:05:33","slug":"prioritizing-acquaintances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/13\/prioritizing-acquaintances\/","title":{"rendered":"Prioritizing Acquaintances"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A Union Civil War pension file I am looking at contains over 200 pages. Like most pension files of this type, it contains numerous affidavits. In this case, most of them revolve around the deceased soldier&#8217;s health and his mother&#8217;s financial status. A large number of individuals signed affidavits testifying to both those aspects of the claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Determining which of those individuals to research first has been a challenge. How should I prioritize my research into the individuals who appear in the file? It&#8217;s important to think about what my research goals are (for me it&#8217;s completely documenting the claimants life). While it&#8217;s hard to make list ranking individuals in the file from first to last, generally speaking I am using these factors to decide which people should appear higher on the list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Attendance at key events in claimant&#8217;s life-individuals who indicate they were at funerals or weddings of members of the claimant&#8217;s family are more likely to be close associates and possibly family members. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Individuals who knew the claimant for a length of time that suggests they knew each other when claimant lived in other states or locations.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Individuals who indicate they have known the claimant for her entire life. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Individuals who indicate they knew the claimant for only a few years have been put further down on the list. Individuals who appear in a legal or other capacity are generally placed lowest on the priority list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<details class=\"wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow\"><summary><\/summary>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Union Civil War pension file I am looking at contains over 200 pages. Like most pension files of this type, it contains numerous affidavits. In this case, most of them revolve around the deceased soldier&#8217;s health and his mother&#8217;s financial status. A large number of individuals signed affidavits testifying to both those aspects of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32728","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\/153979"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}