Get everything while you’re there," was the advice I was given many years ago when I was planning a trip to a distant repository that had a large collection of unindexed original records. Since then, I’ve given many students the same advice in hopes of saving them a costly return trip for something they overlooked. Neither my long-ago advisor nor I meant it literally of course. We meant to say "get everything that pertains to the matter at hand." At the time, it seemed like sound advice.
There are, however, two flaws in the admonition. First, we can seldom identify at an early stage whether or not all the information we may eventually find relates to the matter at hand, and second, there’s not enough time to record everything–even about those surnames, localities, or time periods we already know relate to our research problem.
The need to visit, and possibly revisit, distant repositories has decreased substantially over the past quarter-century, first with the development of large genealogical libraries with extensive collections of microfilmed original records, and more recently with the availability of original document images on the Internet. Preeminent among the microfilm collections and international in scope is the Family History Library, with its more than 2 million rolls of film, most of which are also available through hundreds of affiliated local Family History Centers.
A number of other institutions have also developed microfilm collections that are national or regional in scope. Among them are venerable genealogical societies like the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society in New York City; public libraries like the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Clayton Genealogical Library of the Houston, Texas public library system, and the St. Louis County Public Library, which now houses the 20,000-volume circulating book collection of the National Genealogical Society. Patriotic lineage societies like the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, D.C., and the Sons of the American Revolution in Louisville, Kentucky, have extensive microfilm collections. Also noteworthy, although largely restricted to federal records, is the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and its twelve regional branches.
Bringing together these large collections of generally unindexed original document images in single locations has greatly changed the way we search for genealogical information. Few researchers today attempt to "get everything" unless they’re trying to abstract all the data from a record series so they can index and publish it.
Narrow Your Focus
With large collections of records at hand, we soon learn to use one type of record to provide information that will narrow the scope of our research in another type of record so we can focus directly on the problem of interest, using our available research time to greatest advantage.
For the most part, the records we use were created by governmental agencies or private institutions and businesses for their own purposes, which seldom, if ever, considered eventual use by genealogists. Indexes, if they exist at all, usually list only principals to a transaction, not everyone involved, and may be incomplete. Early on, we learn that we may have to rely on a brute-force approach, examining every entry to find the one that pertains to our case. However, there are ways of narrowing the range of records on which we have to use this brute-force approach. While lacking what might be called surgical precision, these techniques can limit our search to a reasonable range of entries that makes the most effective use of our time, while minimizing the risk that we will overlook significant information.
The approach we take to any particular record series depends upon how it is arranged. Many of the significant records we use are arranged serially, in the order they were filed, usually close to the time of the event or transaction described. Often, they were entered in sequence into a substantially bound register, or loose documents kept in the order they were received and then bound, at substantial cost, into hardcover volumes for preservation.
Archivists have observed that the probability that an individual record would be preserved was often proportional to the size of the volume in which it was bound–loose papers and small notebooks tend to be lost or discarded more readily than large and important-appearing bound volumes.
Other records are arranged by locality, and still others in alphabetical sequence, or numerically according to an institutional numbering system. Occasionally, combinations of these arrangements may be used–a geographical arrangement will use an alphabetical sequence of place names, or transactions within a month or quarter will be arranged alphabetically by the name of a principal party.
Arranged Chronologically
To narrow the search in records arranged chronologically, we need to find the earliest date at which the record could have been created or filed, and the range of dates where it would most likely be filed–although we can’t rule out the possibility of a late filing or registration. The most useful finding aid for this purpose is age information, which is likely to be found in family or census records or obituaries and other newspaper references. "Years married" and "years resident" data from censuses is also helpful, although the marriages data will not relate to earlier marriages.
Deeds, wills, and vital registrations–birth, marriage, divorce, and death–are among the records usually kept in bound volumes, in the order they were filed. In the United States, deeds are generally indexed by the name of both the seller or grantor and the buyer or grantee, so the easiest point of entry is the name of one or the other. The best source for names of owners of specific properties are tax assessment records. Where property is known to have changed ownership over a period of years but no deed can be found, it is possible to suspect descent within a family, possibly through a will. If no will can be found for subsequent owners listed in assessment records, there should be a partition proceeding by the appropriate court for the jurisdiction, dividing the property among named heirs.
Where microfilms of all the records are in one library, or the records have been transferred to a central archives, our task is greatly simplified. Before these recent developments, we would have been back and forth from library to deed, probate, assessment, and court offices to gather the necessary information. Seldom would we have been able to gather everything on the first visit, unless by chance no new surnames came into the title chain during the period being researched.
Arranged Geographically
When records are arranged geographically, like census, tax assessment, and voter registration records, or the city property transfer registries maintained in many municipalities, we need a place name, precise location, or address as a point of entry. Family sources are often a key, but in their absence, city directories can be used in urban areas, and the popular cadastral county atlases of the nineteenth century, showing names of most of the significant land owners and business proprietors, serve a similar function for rural areas. County histories of the "mug book" type (where subscribers paid to have their biographies, genealogies, and portraits or "mugs" included) frequently detail locations.
Arranged Alphabetically
When the arrangement is alphabetical, access looks deceptively simple once a name to search for is known. But what if marriage records are arranged under the husband’s name, and you only know the wife’s name? Then an age is needed to narrow the range of a "brute-force" record-by-record search. Some records, especially correspondence and business papers are arranged alphabetically by subject, rather than by name, and it is essential to consult any finding aid that describes the scope of the subjects.
Federal military pension records are arranged alphabetically by name of the veteran whose service created the pension entitlement, even when a wife or child was the applicant. From the summary of service found in the file, we can identify the units in which the veterans served and consult their records and accounts of the unit’s service. Military service records for individuals, filed alphabetically in a centralized file, are a twentieth-century development. For earlier periods, individual records were extracted onto cards from unit records, often long after the war, but are filed by regiment. For Civil War soldiers of the volunteer forces, the state in which the regiment was raised as well as its number is needed. Most states, however, have alphabetical published or card indexes to individuals who served in the state’s volunteer regiments.
Arranged Numerically
When records are arranged numerically, as with the records of the Social Security Administration, the Railroad Retirement Board, and most modern courts, we must have the agency identify the number for an individual or case of interest, unless public access is provided to part or all of its index. Usually the records themselves are not available for a record-by-record search, and the sheer volume would make such a search impractical.
However records are arranged, keep in mind it is seldom practical to "get everything" in a single search. Whenever one type of record gives new names, new places, or a new date range that bears on your problem, use the new information to go back and search for them in the appropriate sections of records you’ve already searched–but with a different focus.
Donn Devine, CG, CGI, a genealogical consultant from Wilmington, Delaware, is an attorney for the city and archivist of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. A former board member of the National Genealogical Society, he currently chairs its Standards Committee, and is a trustee of the Board for Certification of Genealogists®.
Return to the Ancestry Magazine January/February 2003 table of contents.
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