Researching Your Family Tree Online - Moving Past Beginner Basics

This may seem very basic, but a lot of people make this mistake. When searching for events that occurred prior to marriage for females in your family tree, don't forget to search using their maiden name. The author mentions searching for her ancestor's wife under her married name -- Evelyn Jewel -- but not under her married name, Evelyn Paulson. If you don't know what your female ancestor's name was prior to marriage then that's what you should be looking for. In this example, the author could have found Evelyn's maiden name by searching FamilySearch.com as they did for her husband. Again, this information about her would have to be considered as a clue, not fact, but as you'll see later, further research helps to confirm her identity.
More: Top 10 Places to Find Maiden Names