How much research is enough? Most of us stop when we seem to have found answers to the specific questions that led us to start, such as: who were this ancestor’s parents, and when and where was this individual born? But what other questions should we have asked?
Unless we have some way to assess the shortfalls in our work, we really don’t know if we stopped our search too soon. Was there any significance to the fact that the parents lived in Syracuse, but the child was born in Utica? Should we have asked why? What more might we have learned if we had asked and then discovered that the mother’s family was from Utica?
For many of us, holes in our research show up when we try to write a coherent account of what we’ve found about a family or individual. On more than one occasion, the questions I have asked have sent me back to a repository for answers I should have gotten on the first visit, had I asked the questions at that time. But many family historians have neither the time nor inclination to put their findings into a written account; they are content to record their results on annotated family group sheets or in a computer genealogy program that provides for a source citation for each item of information. What other ways might researchers uncover shortfalls in their research?
One way is by using the timeline approach. Timelines are often used as a way of placing ancestors in the historical context of their times. They are included in some of the most popular genealogy software programs, and have been popularized in genealogical publications. Timelines allow researchers to relate various events in a person’s life to what was occurring in the nation or world at the same time.
Life Elements
The timelines recommended here are for various elements in an individual’s life–ones that all too often we either consider apart from the other elements, or ignore if they don’t seem to bear directly on the relationships or vital events that primarily concern us. Those elements, in the approximate order that the earliest records tend to be made, include: residence, religion, education, health, neighbors, associates, employment, interests, spouses, children, means, military service, and civic activities.
Few genealogical forms or software programs encourage the collection of data in all of these areas, and even those that provide places for it seldom display the data so that any disconnects will be immediately apparent. We’ll discuss how to cope with this problem further on.
Census schedules from 1850 and later contain a considerable body of data that can help fill in life-element timelines, including school attendance and means, even though it is available only at ten-year intervals. Some states, like New York, once conducted censuses midway between the federal censuses. And in urban areas, city directories can provide information on an annual or biennial basis on residence and employment, and sometimes the given names of wives or of widows’ deceased husbands.
Data Disconnects
Data disconnects are those points where information is missing about some element, or the information we have is not completely consistent. Each such instance should raise a red warning flag for us. The disconnects only become apparent after we have assembled data for several different elements during a person’s lifetime, and arranged them in parallel tracks for comparison so we can recognize when data is missing, unexpected, unexplained, or inconsistent.
Missing Data. We would expect, in the normal course of events, to find recurring references to continuing residence, a spouse’s identity, or the birth of children, and a gap of five years or more should lead to questions: Is this the same person, before and after the gap? If so, did he or she reside elsewhere in the interim? If a wife’s given name is unchanged, is she the same person? Were children born elsewhere during the period?
If we lack evidence of a young man’s residence between 1861 and 1865, for example, we might expect Civil War military service as a possible explanation. If the element "military service" has no data, we should begin an immediate search in this area. If no confirmation is found, we then need to look in nearby localities for continuity in life elements like occupation, associates, or civic activities.
Without such additional data or other confirmation that we are dealing with the same individual, we have not met the genealogical proof standard, and should hedge our statements with qualifying conditions like "probably" or "possibly."
Unexpected Data. Before the twentieth century, gaps of five years or more between the births of children in a family were not the rule and these gaps call for further investigation. While a series of miscarriages could account for the gaps, different mothers with the same given name could, unless clearly differentiated, also account for such gaps, as could not-yet-found births at a location other than the family’s usual residence.
Similarly, business proprietors require assets to operate. If census records, tax assessment, or probate inventories show little property ownership, some further research is in order. Businesses do suffer reversals, and that could be the explanation, but the disconnect would point toward court records of bankruptcies or foreclosures for verification, as well as other valuable data they might contain. In the absence of more specific evidence, we would need a contemporary downturn in the economy, usually known as a panic in the nineteenth century, to confirm recent business reversals.
Also, some unexpected data may be the result of inaccuracies or errors in secondary information provided by the sources we’re using, particularly in the case of census schedules, city directories, and newspapers. To reject it on that basis, however, we must be able to rely on other information that is clearly more believable.
Unexplained Data. It is not unusual to find a person changing religious affiliations at the time of marriage, or taking up residence in another community. However, a change in denominations at the same time as a change in employment cries out for explanation. When the name is not clearly identified with a single individual, we could be dealing with two different people.
Other possible explanations might be a loss of employment upon embracing a new belief, or subscribing to a new creed in order to obtain employment. More data about the individual or the social and cultural values prevalent in the community is needed for a satisfactory explanation.
Discrepancies between education and occupation should be questioned also. When a census shows a youth of fourteen years not in school during the year and working as a mill hand, and ten years later the same "person" is a twenty-four-year-old lawyer, some additional research and explanation is needed before accepting these two profiles as the same person.
Inconsistent Data. When two items of information are clearly inconsistent (if one is true, the other couldn’t be) there is clearly additional work to be done. We need to look for further evidence that one of the following applies: 1) one of the items was erroneous, either as reported or recorded, or 2) the items apply to different individuals with the same or similar names. Until the inconsistency is resolved in one way or the other, no valid conclusion can be drawn from the data in question.
Displaying Life-element Timelines
To identify the disconnects, timelines for the various life elements need to be presented in tabular form, so that the names, events, or conditions for similar time periods appear in the same row or column for easy comparison. While blank paper can be used, paper already ruled with rows and columns is more convenient. Entries can be made directly into a spreadsheet program, or you can use the software program to produce blank forms with life elements and time periods used as row and column headings.
Either way, the purpose is to raise questions, not to answer them or put them to rest. Each question that appears is an indication that more research is needed in that particular area, and that we still have more work to do before we can be sure of our findings.
For researchers who don’t intend to summarize their findings in essay form, use of life-element timelines can provide the same kind of final reality check that authors obtain when they have to organize their research results into a written presentation.
Donn Devine, CG, CGI, a genealogical consultant from Wilmington, Delaware, is an attorney for that city and archivist of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. He is a director of the National Genealogical society and chair of its Standards Committee, and is a trustee of the Board for Certification of Genealogists.
Return to the Ancestry Magazine September/October 2001 Table of Contents.
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