| Breaking Down Walls, Brick by Brick: The Search for Henrietta | ||||||||||
| Step Three: What do you want to know? Where to look for answers | ||||||||||
Once you have all of your facts collected in one location, it is time to record them on a timeline. Log every life event you have found for your ancestor, from birth to death. Then look for blank spots that need to be filled. What facts and dates about this ancestor are still missing? Do you have birth, marriage and death dates? Parents names? Each question that you have most likely has several sources where you can look for the answer. Create a list of the sources/places you have already checked, whether or not they yielded any clues. Have you tried them all? Sources for Missing Genealogy Information
Two genealogy books that I often check for inspiration are
The Source: A
Guidebook of American Genealogy, edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs & Sandra
Hargreaves Luebking and
Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places, by
Laura Szucs Pfeiffer. Both of these books list pages of sources for finding a
wide variety of answers and I can usually find inspiration for sources that I
have previously overlooked. In Henriettas case they prompted me to look for
church records (none found), guardianship records (no luck) and a newspaper
announcement of her marriage and obituary (still on my to do list). For more information: Using Timelines in Your Genealogy
Research How Do I Find Parent's Names? How Do I Find a Birth Date or Location? How Do I Find a Marriage Date or
Location? How Do I Find a Death Date or Location? Next page > Are you an informed researcher? Counties have ancestors too |
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URL:
http://genealogy.about.com/library/weekly/aa042602e.htm
© 2002 Kimberly
Powell
A version of this article was originally
published in the October 2001 edition of
Everton's Genealogical Helper

