Kindle Notes & Highlights
Those “Wrong” Places May be Clues
somewhere in your notes you might indicate why you believe where they were married and that you have no proof and that your statement is an assumption.
After you have exhausted all the variations on your ancestor’s first and middle names while searching for them in an online database, consider that they might have been enumerated with just their initials.
Most sites will indicate where they obtained their information (start reading the “Frequently Asked Questions,” “More About” or similarly named page).
Find out what was used and find if all records were extracted. Don’t assume you know what is in the database.
Research the ancestor in the area of settlement first as completely as possible (everywhere they lived, not just where they finally settled).
may also provide the names of other relatives or associates whose overseas origins may be easier to trace.
Did your ancestor die with minor children? If so, there might be guardianship records for his children,
Researchers should always research the guardians fully to determine if they had any relationship to the children—either by birth or by marriage.
Other newspapers may have carried the obituary and those write-ups might be different from the one published in the nearest town.
If you are looking for someone in the census and cannot find them, try reversing the first and last name.
review a chapter in a guidebook. The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy (Third Edition)
Val Greenwood’s The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy (4th edition)
If Grandma or Grandpa “evaporates” after the death of their spouse, make certain you have searched for all their children,
Are there sources you do not use because you think they are too difficult to use or because you are unfamiliar with them?
And assuming your ancestors weren’t the kind of people to end up in court records is a bad one to make.
If you cannot find deeds or records of an estate settlement for your ancestor, look for a partition suit.
Have you reviewed information you found early in your research?
If you posted to the message boards at Ancestry/Rootsweb (boards.ancestry.com) or other genealogy sites, have you looked at your message lately to see if there are responses?
Divorce records are usually kept with the county court records and are usually public records.
A grantor is someone who is selling or transferring their ownership in real property to someone else, while a grantee is someone who is purchasing property or is having property ownership transferred to them.
why was this document created?” “What purpose did this document serve?”).
Does your local library have access to any fee-based databases or sites that could be helpful in your genealogical research?
(http://boards.ancestry.com)
Whenever a relative has been located in a record, view at least the page before and after the record for your relative.
Write down your own life story and ask those interview questions you have been putting off. The human mind is the most fragile repository we use. Don’t waste it and don’t miss an opportunity.
There are also digital images of out-of-copyright legal dictionaries available on sites such as GoogleBooks (books.google.com) and Archive.org (www.archive.org).
Make a calendar with your ancestor’s dates of birth on it. Then on the ancestor’s birthday, review the information you have about that person.
if you know what your ancestor’s occupation was, have you learned about that occupation during the time he or she lived?
The Bureau of Land Management website has a map of these lines at glorecords.blm.gov/images/reference/principal_meridians_and_baselines.png.
The “Reference Center” at the Bureau of Land Management website has excellent information on surveying and property descriptions federal land records as well: glorecords.blm.gov/reference/default.aspx.
If your research has hit a brick wall, make certain you have completely researched the in-laws.
Have you updated your email address to those old posts you have made to message boards years ago?
There are several sites where users can create blogs with little technical knowledge, including www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com.
Transcribing documents serves a purpose: it forces you to actually read the document.
it is relatively easy to find the names of those who were godparents for your ancestor’s children. Those names are clues as they are potential relatives.
If you can’t find your ancestor in the 1840 census and you think he really should be there, look for his 1830 neighbors in 1840 or try looking for his 1850 neighbors in 1840.
Decide what you want to know, determine what you already know, and learn about ways to get there. Research plans need to be more detailed than this, obviously, but don’t do your research in a haphazard fashion.
consider joining a mailing list at Rootsweb (lists.rootsweb.com), a genealogical Facebook group, etc.
Academic journal articles (particularly in history, culture, and sociology) may contain excellent background reading material on your area of ethnic group of interest.
Do you have maps of all your ancestral locations at a time contemporary to your ancestors?
Write Down Everything 08 September 2009 You will forget. You will not remember it. And you will wonder where you put it or where you found it. Write it down. Do not use little pieces of paper. They get lost and you will lose your mind looking for them.
The best time to create a citation to a record is the moment you have it. It is right there in your face, hopefully you know what it is and where you got it if you are looking right at
Remember that for every ancestor who owned a piece of property, there should be a deed or title transfer when the property was obtained or came into his possession.
All of us involved in genealogy should be learning something every day. Becoming a better genealogist is a daily process of growth.
If your ancestor was a farmer, was he a farm owner, a tenant farmer, or a farm laborer? If he was a farm laborer, did he have one family for whom he worked for decades or did he work where he could as a day laborer?
Before you start doing wildcard and other searches at an online database, make a complete list of all spelling variants of the name for which you are searching.
Keep a written list of search options so that searches are not missed and so you don’t have to create the list again.
www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps and searches at Worldcat (www.worldcat.org) for “sanborn map yourtown”
Can’t find anything on an occupation? Consider typing it into GoogleBooks at books.google.com. You may discover more than you realized. Also consider typing it into Google Images images.google.com. Don’t neglect searching for that occupation in old newspapers that have full-text search capabilities as well.
