Sometimes the most important clue in your research is the record you expected to find—but didn’t. The Insight Missing records are not always dead ends. Often, they are clues that point your research in an entirely new direction. Most genealogists focus on finding records. Experienced researchers also pay close attention to the records that should […]
Category: Insights
The records you expect may not exist, but the records you need often do. Many researchers begin with a mental picture of the records they expect to find: When those records are missing, they assume the trail has ended. In reality, ancestors often appear in unexpected places: Experienced genealogists don’t search for specific records. They […]
When the dates don’t fit, neither does the conclusion. The Insight Many researchers become attached to a theory because it feels right. The problem is that genealogy is ultimately constrained by time. A person cannot be born after their mother dies. A father cannot appear in two places at the same time. A child cannot […]
What you don’t find can be just as important as what you do. The Insight Genealogists naturally focus on finding records. Every search is performed with the hope that a census entry, obituary, marriage record, newspaper article, or probate file will appear and provide the next clue. Yet some of the most important information in […]
Some ancestors left very few records of their own. Their neighbors, however, may have left extensive paper trails. Families often migrated together, attended the same churches, served as witnesses for one another, and appeared together in tax lists, land transactions, and newspapers. Studying the people living nearby can reveal migration routes, family relationships, and community […]
The name that solves a genealogy problem is often not the one you were searching for. The Insight Many researchers focus only on the primary names appearing in a record. A marriage record, deed, probate file, court record, birth certificate, or death certificate, however, often contains additional names whose significance may not be immediately obvious. […]
Every search result tells a story. Sometimes the most important clue is the record you expected to find—but didn’t. The Insight Most researchers celebrate successful searches and quickly forget unsuccessful ones. That can be a mistake. A search that produces no results often provides valuable information. If an ancestor does not appear in a census […]
When records seem to disappear, the problem is often geography—not genealogy. The Insight Many genealogists spend hours searching for a record in the place where they believe it should be. When the record does not appear, they often conclude that it was lost, destroyed, or never created. In reality, records frequently move. Counties were divided. […]
If you search for only one spelling of a name, you may be searching for only part of the family story. The Insight One of the quickest ways to miss an ancestor is to search for only one spelling of a name. Today, we tend to think of names as fixed and permanent. In the […]
The most important discoveries often come after the straightforward path disappears. The Insight Many people begin genealogy expecting a simple progression from one generation to the next. Find a parent, then a grandparent, then a great-grandparent, and continue moving backward through time. Reality is rarely that straightforward. Records disappear. Names change. Ages vary from one […]