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"Along Those Lines ..."
by George G. Morgan
Click Here for George Morgan's Archive
| "Tips to Help Focus Your Research" |
Wouldn't it be nice to gather all the research information on an entire family line all at once? Wouldn't it be nice if it were all documented with proper source citations? And what if all the information was 100% correct? This kind of thing happens only in a genealogist's wildest dreams. It might happen, too, if you had unlimited amounts of money with which to pay an excellent professional genealogical researcher to do the work for you. Few of us, however, can afford this luxury. If you are fortunate enough to have had someone else, perhaps another family member, provide you with their documented research efforts, you know how nice it is to have that road map to follow, to verify, and/or corroborate their information. Certainly you will want to examine each fact, carefully weigh the evidence, make sure it is correct, and then validate or disqualify the hypotheses. This certainly cannot be done all at once. It is a laborious effort that requires the use of a methodical approach. The fact is, it's very easy to be overwhelmed with the research task you have in front of you. You want to work your way through all the data you have at hand and keep moving forward. Sometimes, though, you just have to stop and focus your research on one person at a time or one family group at a time. You have to learn all you can about that individual or that group before you move on to others. If you don't focus in this manner, often you'll find that you never properly complete your work on them and that you never quite make the time to come back to them. As a result, you may end up with a whole collection of inadequately researched materials and what might be called a "diluted family history." In "Along Those Lines ..." this week, let me share some suggestions for how to focus your efforts and effectively approach the task of researching a specific individual or family group. START SMALL When you started your genealogical odyssey, you started with yourself and worked backward. This is an ideal approach for all your research. Start with one person and focus on all you know and can learn about him or her. Take all the information you have about them and evaluate it for accuracy and reasonability (does it fit with other facts/information?). Do you have the best possible documentation of the fact (primary vs. secondary sources) and are there citations for all the sources? Based on having performed this assessment, you'll have a better idea for what you need to look. Focus on one family member at a time. If you're looking at census records, you are looking for names. Sure, using the 1850 and later censuses, you may be able to verify the names, ages, residence, occupation, literacy, and the birth location of every member of a family group. However, you will still need to focus on individual facts in the life of each specific person. That will mean researching land and tax records for each person, tracing the marriage license for each person, looking for death records, probate records, funeral records, obituaries, and the host of other records created throughout the person's life. You may find it helpful to construct a chronological biographical index to help place and keep all the facts you have in perspective. I covered this in the "Along Those Lines ..." column of 4 September 1998 called "Bring 'Em Back to Life!" On the Internet, the column may be accessed at http://www.ancestry.com/columns/george/09-04-98.htm SET GOALS When you go to the library, the courthouse, the National Archives, your state archives, the LDS Family History Center, the cemetery, or anywhere else to research, make some decisions in advance. Set goals for who and what you are going to research. Decide who you are going to research. Select one, maybe two people, and focus your research efforts on them. It is far better to walk away from a day's research with a lot of information about one person than snippets about twenty people. You will have more data to weigh at one time. Your perspective of what you have learned and the context in which you found it will be fresher. You'll find yourself better able to mentally fit these pieces in with others you already had and devise a stronger puzzle solution. Choose a specific type of record to research. If you are trying to determine where a person lived, you may decide to focus your attention on microfilmed census records. Trace the person's presence in his/her parents' home and then in a spouse's home, etc., throughout his/her lifetime. In this case, you would concentrate on census records at the library or FHC. You might want to examine all the land and property records at the courthouse for a given person, and so you would concentrate on deed books, tax rolls, lien records, and land sale records. Choose a specific location and time period to research. If your ancestor moved several times, you may want or need to focus on one geographical area and a specific span of time. This may help you narrow down the number of unindexed volumes of materials you need to study. For example, I searched through an archive of nineteenth century newspapers for specific people's obituaries. I made several visits and focused on specific years each time. My reward was that I was able to be thorough in my search without being overwhelmed with the size of the task and, as a result, I located the obituaries I wanted and found news articles about the people as well. Make notes of what you did and did not locate. If you set goals for yourself and couldn't satisfy them because of a lack of resources, missing or destroyed records, or other reasons, make notes for yourself. Many people use research calendars. These provide a structured form where you can note what information you were researching, where you looked, what resources you referred to, what you found, and what you did with the information. You can structure and organize these handy sheets by individual, by surname, location and/or other method to suit your own needs. You'll find that a research calendar can help you focus on missing items and can prevent you from wasting time researching the same material multiple times. (There's one book about SC Marriage Records that I find at many libraries. It has been published in four cover colors that I know of, and I always gravitate to that book for some reason. My research calendar has prevented me from duplicating my efforts and making duplicate photocopies of key pages in this book.) EVALUATE ALL NEW MATERIAL YOU FIND When you receive more information about an individual, take the time to reevaluate your previous data in light of the new discovery. One piece of new material may cause you to change your entire perspective and reassess your hypotheses. By taking a biographical outline with you to the research location, you can quickly tell if you have a startling new piece of information that requires evaluation. Sometimes it isn't possible to tell this, in which case you may need to take the new information back home to compare with other materials you already have. Make certain that you always weigh new information against the old. Don't just append it to the database. Look at it; see where it fits. Ask yourself what it means and whether the new information changes your picture of the person you were researching or one of his/her relatives. When you set your goals, please don't make the mistake of biting off more than you can chew. If you undertake too much, you can become overwhelmed, your research will be diluted, you may become frustrated and stressed, and you'll walk away at the end of the day without a strong feeling of accomplishment. A PERSONAL APPROACH I recently met a wonderful and generous woman named Melanie Henry through the Web-based message board at Genforum http://genforum.genealogy.com. She has researched one of my family lines and compiled an impressive collection of document copies. She mailed me 103 photocopied pages of these documents last week. As I opened the envelope, I really felt like I had struck the mother lode! These documents provided me with copious amounts of evidence I needed to substantiate as fact some of the hypotheses I had developed based on hearsay and secondary information sources. You can be sure, however, that I won't be performing data entry into my genealogy program yet. I've already read through all the material and considered how it fits into the material I already had. I see a few materials that provide conflicting data and I have a few questions to ask. Once I hear from her, I'll begin to research the most important of the several hundred names in these copies--the names for family members whose data are most pertinent to my research. I'll also research their siblings, spouses and children. This will take me some time. That's because I want to focus my research and concentrate on quality research. After all, I have some time to do it right. Your research approach will differ from mine based on your family origins, locations, and the types of records you seek. However, the need to focus our research and concentrate attention on small pieces of our puzzle is universal. Happy hunting! George
"The Genealogy Forum on America Online: The Official User's Guide" by George G. Morgan The definitive guide to the Genealogy Forum on America Online has been published by Ancestry Incorporated, the leader in genealogical reference publishing. The Genealogy Forum will introduce you to America Online and to each of t"he types of resources found within the forum. From "how-to" guides for beginners to reference articles for experienced users; from message boards to file libraries; from vast surname resources to informative chats and lectures; from international research guides to extensive ethnic resources; and from sophisticated forum search facilities to the very best resources on the Internet, The Genealogy Forum will teach you how to make the most effective use of this online treasure trove.
The article originally appeared in the Genealogy Forum on America Online. You may send E-mail to alonglines@aol.com. George Morgan would like to hear from you but, because of the volume of E-mail, is unable to personally respond to each letter individually. He also regrets that he cannot assist you with your personal genealogical research. Click Here for George Morgan's Archive
Copyright 1998 George G. Morgan All Rights reserved "Along Those Lines ..." is a weekly feature of the Genealogy Forum on America Online (Keyword: ROOTS). This column originally appeared in the Genealogy Forum on America Online. You may send E-mail alonglines@aol.com. George Morgan would like
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