Tag: Research goal

The objective of your research

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Learning more about genealogy research

The internet continues to excel at what it was designed to do: Share information. For family history researchers, the free sharing of methods and resources has transformed a pastime that was once championed by the elite eager to prove descendancy from royalty to a hobby that proves we are one family.

I’ve compiled a list of free resources and learning opportunities for people who are just getting started or want to make sure their documentary genealogy research is on a firm foundation.

FamilySearch: FamilySearch is the largest database of free genealogy records and guidance on how to do genealogy. The FamilySearch Wiki is one of the first places I turn when starting a new project.

  • Research Resources: This part of the Wiki includes a section on Beginning Genealogy with a section on the research process, tips on choosing software, how to use the Wiki and research tools. There is more information on this page than any one genealogist knows.
  • Guided Research: This feature of the Wiki will walk you through how to research birth, marriage and death records in many localities around the world. Use the map to identify the locality you want and follow the links.
  • Main Wiki Page: From the main page, you can find the resources available for any locality, down to the county level in the US.

National Genealogical Society: This membership group has been around for over 100 years and publishes the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, the most prestigious genealogy publication. Recent diversity and inclusion efforts are encouraging.

African American Research: The continued efforts to share records related to African American history and the legacy of enslavement has meant more is possible than ever. Because of systematic attempts to hide the reality of slavery, records can be hard to find. African American research does require a great deal of persistence and unique approaches to discovering ancestors.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars presents genealogists talking about what they do best. Members have access to the full library of recordings, and many recordings are free for the first week.

  • Register here for free live webinars and check out other pre-recorded webinars on the same page.

Family History Research Companies all have free resources, often as a blog or as a series of videos. Taking the time to learn from their experts can make your research more efficient.

I set aside time every week to continue to learn more about family history research. I’m grateful there are free resources for researchers of all experience levels.

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Research Like a Pro Week 5: Research Planning

Here is the latest instalment in my series about the Research Like a Pro process. I’m serving as a Peer Group Leader for this study group.

Our assignment this week was to plan our research phase, including:

  1. Summary of known facts based on our timeline
  2. Background information about the locality based on our locality guide
  3. Working hypothesis
  4. Identified sources
  5. Prioritized research strategy

During research planning, I discovered that I had not included everything I knew in the timeline phase. Since the James Stokers were often confused, I knew more about Edward Stoker, the father of a James Stoker, so I returned to my timeline and added information about Edward Stoker.

Writing up these sections forces the researcher to consider how they know what they know and what is needed to answer the research question. I’ve noticed that documenting middle name origins is particularly problematic. They seem to appear out of nowhere in authored sources. In a same-name project, they could be useful if records over time demonstrate consistent use. 

Writing a working hypothesis creates a tension between confirmation bias and keeping an open mind. It’s more likely that researchers do have a bias, so writing the hypothesis is one way to get it in the open. Since hypotheses are meant to be disproven, writing is the safest step for the researcher and a good reason to have peer review of finished products.

Prioritizing is valuable because it avoids the distractions that genealogical research so often inspires! I am not always certain of which sources will most efficiently answer my question and appreciate thinking that step through.

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Research Like a Pro Week 2: Timeline and Citations

This is the second entry about my experience doing a research project while I serve as a peer group leader for the Research Like a Pro Study Group hosted by Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer of Family Locket.

Updating the Research Objective

With the assistance of my peers, I revised my research objective to be:

This project seeks to uniquely identify each James Stoker in Bourbon County, Kentucky from approximately 1820 to 1880. 

  • James Stoker filed a bond to marry Polly Ross on 9 December 1822 in Bourbon County.
  • Jas. Stoker, age 79, lived in the household of his son-in-law, Silas. Cleaver, in 1880 in Millersburg, Bourbon County. 
  • James H. Stoker, presumed age 40-50, lived in Bourbon County in 1830.

The task this week was two-fold: create a timeline of known facts and to cite them properly.

Timeline

Creating a timeline involves taking everything already known about the research topic and arranging it in order. This provides an opportunity to see new patterns and identify gaps in the research. I am using Airtable to organize my research.

I entered the documents I had about the various James Stokers into the timeline tab in Airtable. My timeline has the following fields (columns): Event, Stoker as named in record, Stoker sorting tests (more on this later), Date (text field YYYY-MM-DD with as much information as is known), Place (Single-select field type written State, County, Town using 2 letter state abbreviations), Type (of event, another single-select field with choices like birth, census, death), URL (to the source document), Source citation (yes, the entire citation. This is the master location for the citation), Details (an abstract of the information in the source), FANS (link to the FAN Club table), Notes (thoughts about the source).\

I included all the known events for my ancestor James Stoker since I had eight census records for him (two are state censuses). I have a birth state, birth date calculated from his cemetery marker, marriage date and place, death and cemetery information.

Since this is a project to distinguish different people of the same/similar name, I am testing using two columns for name, one as it appears in the record, and the second column to try different ways to sort the James Stokers. Place and time will guide the sorting.

Citations

Complete source citations form the foundation for genealogical analysis. Fortunately, I formed good habits citing my sources starting in 1998 when I was enrolled in the certificate program in Family History and Genealogy at the University of Washington. Citations weren’t as exacting then as they are now. Citation is also required in my other field, health care, and I worked in research for several years and co-authored scientific publications. Transitioning to the professional genealogist role meant switching to humanities-style citations and meeting genealogical standards. I frequently refer to the Chicago Manual of Style to manage the mechanics of humanities writing and citations. I refer to Elizabeth Shown Mill’s comprehensive book, Evidence Explained, and Thomas Jones’ Mastering Genealogical Documentation as needed.

Using a template for genealogical citations made it easier for me to meet the genealogical standards. I have an Airtable Citation Guide accessible from my bookmarks bar. It is based on the Research Like a Pro templates. The fields in my base are Name (type of source, like Birth Certificate Original, FindAGrave, Pension File), Category (birth, cemetery, military, for example), template (see example below), Citation Example (a completed citation of that type), Short Form (when citing the source multiple times.) I tend to put more in citations than others (like complete dates instead of just years and complete stable URLs) because I can always shorten the citation if needed.

Here is an example of a template for FindAGrave:

Find A Grave, database and images ([Stable URL] : accessed [DD Month YYYY]), memorial [NNNNN], [Name As Appears], ([BBBB-DDDD]), gravestone photographed by [Contributor], citing [Name of Cemetery, Town, County, State].

And the 1921 Canadian Census at Library and Archives Canada:

1921 Census, [Province], [name] District [#], Enumeration Sub-district [#], page [#], dwelling [#], household [#], [Name as Written]; database with images Library and Archives Canada ([stable URL] : accessed [DD Month YYYY]); citing LAC microfilm [#].

Creating the timeline and the source citations supports the next part of the research process, analyzing the evidence.

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Research Like a Pro Week 1: Getting started and the Research Objective

This fall I am volunteering as a Peer Group Leader for the Research Like a Pro Study Group hosted by Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer of Family Locket. Making the transition from family historian to professional genealogist required me to become a more disciplined researcher. The team at Family Locket supported me on my journey through their podcast, books, courses, and presentations at conferences. I’m a process person likely due to my background in quality improvement. Throughout my healthcare career, the Model for Improvement guided our efforts with the message “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” (Paul Batalden, often quoted by Don Berwick). To improve as a genealogist, I needed to change my system. In this case, that’s the research process. For the next ten weeks, I will share my insights into the Research Like a Pro process. This course is focusing on documentary research. As a peer group leader, I will be completing a project with the participants. It’s a great opportunity to work on my own family history.

Pedigree Analysis

Identifying potential areas for research is the first step in making the most of your research efforts. Analyzing your pedigree accomplishes this step. DNA Painter provides multiple ways to visualize your family tree. The first thing I checked was my tree completeness. This tells me where I have gaps in my tree and also reminds me about pedigree collapse, which is a subject for a different blog.

Tree Completeness Report from DNA Painter

I’m missing two 3x-great grandparents and sixteen 4x-great grandparents. A fan chart, like this example from DNA Painter is another way to look at the gaps. On DNA painter, hovering over each colored shape brings up the name of the person represented in that space on the chart. That feature isn’t shown in the image below since I can’t capture the hovering. You can use this link to see it for yourself. My father’s side of the family is on the left and my mother on the right. I’ve coordinated these colours to resemble the coloured dots I use on Ancestry to mark my DNA matches.

FAN Chart from DNA Painter Showing Location of Mattie (Childres) Fisher Pike Adams

The arrow indicates the location of the most recent ancestor whose parents I don’t know. Many refer to this as a “Brick Wall.” I could continue documentary research on Mattie for this course. During the Research Like a Pro with DNA e-course I completed, I identified several families that could be Mattie’s parents.

Another opportunity is my 3x-great grandfather, James Stoker, shown below.

James Stoker in DNA Painter Fan Chart

My grandmother believed he was the son of Edward Stoker, a Revolutionary War Veteran. During ProGen 46, I took a look at the link between generations from Edward Stoker to my 3x-great grandfather James and realized there were multiple men named James Stoker who could have been his son James, as noted in a Stoker family Bible. Several of them left records in Bourbon County, Kentucky around 1820 where my ancestor James Stoker married Polly Ross on 9 December 1822. I also noted that the birth date of James Stoker in the family Bible of Edward Stoker (found in his Revolutionary War Pension file) did not match the birthdate of my 3x-great grandfather. Many family trees shared on Ancestry confuse the James Stokers, and the Ancestry hinting algorithm points to Edward Stoker. WikiTree has my James Stoker linked to Edward. The FamilySearch Family Tree has a note about the confusion: ” Be aware…. Another Individual, ‘James T Stoker’ was born in Kentucky and resided most of his live [sic] in Nicholas County, KY. Married Sytha Ann McDonald 20 Dec 1827 in Nicholas Co KY.” I didn’t fully analyze the same-name people when I first discovered the confusion. Thoroughly researching the men and writing up the results would be a contribution and help me correct the WikiTree entry.

Another way of analyzing my pedigree and determining where I could focus is using Yvette Hoitink’s Level Up Challenge. I started working on improving my genealogy based on her approach after she published this idea in her blog in January of 2021. The levels describe the completeness of your research for each ancestor. In some cases I’m not sure which level to give because I write a biography for everyone on WikiTree. I may not have researched all property records (some parts of my family were very mobile) or know every church denomination they attended over time. I used DNA Painter’s Dimensions “Research Level” feature to create this chart.

Research Level at DNA Painter

Based on this diagram, my efforts would be to continue researching my mother’s family, particularly Andrew Jackson Pike and Mattie Childres that I designated as Level 2. (Note: See the YDNA and mtDNA haplogroups? That’s a neat feature of the tree on DNA Painter, and another project is to complete my YDNA and mtDNA tree like Roberta Estes does). I spend a lot of time researching my mother’s family and have neglected my paternal grandmother’s family including James Stoker.

I haven’t written up a same-name case before, so that’s my choice for this project. I expect that writing clearly will be the biggest challenge. For reference, I have two National Genealogical Society (NGSQ) articles I reviewed during my NGSQ Study Group. One is by Shannon Green, who was my mentor in ProGen 46. The other is by Allen R. Peterson and Stephen J. Allen. Both are found in the December 2019 NGSQ

File Organization

Our assignment this week also asks us to describe how we name and organize files and how our choices support our research.

I organize documents in two ways depending on where I am in the research process. My basic family history files structure relies on folders for the surnames of each of my sixteen 2x-great grandparents. Within those folders there are sub-folders for individuals. Women are filed under their maiden name, since it is the only constant. While I am working on a specific project, I create a project folder within the surname or person. Project folders start with a number like 01-Mattie Childres Father so that it will sort at the top. Within each project folder, there is a sources folder.

I use the following naming conventions for files (.jpg, .pdf, .docx, etc.) so that the folder becomes a timeline:

YYYY-MM-DD_LASTNAME_Firstname_Middleifpresent_STATE_County_Town_type.file

  • Dates: YYYY-MM-DD format keeps them sorted. I include as much detail as I have. It could be year only, year and month, or all three. If I don’t have the exact date, I use the best information I have and put “ca” after the date so I know it is approximate and the sorting order is maintained.
  • Names are written as they appear in the record with the surname in ALL CAPS. The caps help me scan the files for surnames and variations.
  • State is the two-digit state or province abbreviation.
  • Type is the type of document
  • File is the extension (pdf, jpg, docx).

Examples:

1840_STOKER_Jas_KY_Bourbon_census.jpg

1882-11_SMILEY_James_KY_Floyd_court.jpg

1955ca_DAVIS_Alvon_AK_Kodiak_letter_to_DAVIS_Edna_transcription.docx

When I complete a project or identify a document I know I want to cite in Reunion (family tree software for Mac) I make a duplicate and add the source number that Reunion assigns to the beginning of the name and file it in a a digital folder in my Reunion folder.

Filed in Reunion:

2622-1882_11_SMILEY_James_KY_Floyd_court.jpg

I keep any useful paper copies in plastic sleeves in 3 ring binders in numeric order of the Reunion citation. I should invest in some archival safe plastic sleeves for the few originals that I own.

Research Objective

A possible research objective is:

The goal of this project is to identify which of multiple James Stokers known to have been in Kentucky was the son of Edward Stoker. Edward Stoker served in Capt. John Lemon’s Company during the Revolutionary War and died 7 May 1846 in Nicholas County, Kentucky.

Another option is:

The goal of this research project is to clarify the identities of men named James Stoker in Bourbon County, Kentucky from approximately 1820 to 1840. James Stoker filed a bond to marry Polly Ross on 9 December 1822 in Bourbon County. Jas. Stoker, age 79, lived in the household of his son-in-law, Jas. Cleaver, in 1880 in Millersburg, Bourbon County. James H. Stoker, presumed age 40-50, lived in Bourbon County in 1830.

I have additional information about the men named James Stoker in Kentucky but I think it would confuse the objective. I can put it in the next section of my research project document, summary of known facts. The objective identifies Edward Stoker, because I realize he is the person I can identify at present. I look forward to receiving feedback from my coursemates!

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Getting started with family history research

First, gather what you already know. This could include prior research by yourself or others, existing documents that you hold (marriages, birth certificates, cards, letters, newspaper clippings, family Bibles), and writing down what you and others know (paying attention to dates and places such as homes, schools, cemeteries, relocations).

As you gather information, collect details and note your sources. Genealogists use writing conventions, such as recording dates as 18 September 2019 (that way there is no confusion about which is the month and which is the year). Place names include as much detail as possible (such as Town, County, State) and are recorded as the place was named at the time of the event. For example, some of my ancestors lived in Thomaston, Maine which was in Lincoln County until 1860 when it became part of the newly-formed Knox County. So my ancestor Nathaniel Fales III was born 28 June 1785 in Thomaston, Lincoln County, Maine and died 24 Jan 1876 in Thomaston, Knox County, Maine. The Atlas of Historical Boundaries Project captures boundary changes for states and counties.

For each item of information, write down where you found it. The detail in the citation needs to be enough that anyone can locate that source. It could be “Floyd Workman, interview by Connie Davis, 2 September 2006, notes privately held by interviewer, [address for private use], Hope, British Columbia, 2022,” or “Cyrus Eaton, The History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, ME., 2 volumes, Hallowell: Masters, Smith, and Company, Printers, 1865, reprinted by Courier-Gazette, Inc., 1972, vol. 1, p. 26.” Citations usually appear as footnotes in genealogical writing so that they never become separated from the information they describe.

Citation in genealogy can be incredibly detailed, and the expert on citation is Elizabeth Shown Mills, author of Evidence Explained. Unless you are writing for publication, you won’t need to know all of the details of genealogical citation but do keep track of your sources! Genealogy software programs can capture this information for you. I use Reunion for Mac. All online genealogy websites can capture sources as well. Without being able to review the citations, it’s hard to evaluate the evidence.

What’s this about evidence? Family history may appear to have facts, such as where people were born and when, but each piece of information must be taken into consideration with other pieces of information. For example, on my grandparent’s marriage certificate my grandmother’s age is recorded as 20 and my grandfather’s age is recorded as 22.[1] Their birth certificates tell a different story. My grandmother was 20, as she was born on 24 October 1910 but my grandfather was 19.[2] My grandmother explained that she was embarrassed to be older than my grandfather so he lied about his age!

Second, be clear about your goal. What do you want to accomplish? If your goal is to build your family tree, consider that each of us have thirty-two 3x great-grandparents, and to build our tree back that far may require researching their siblings and many of our cousins. The best strategy is to start with yourself and work backwards. Fill in the details on key dates and places (birth, marriage, death). If you are interested in context and stories, research their education, occupations, military service, and relocations.

Write down a specific question you want to answer. It might be “Did my 6x great-grandfather Nathaniel Fales II born 25 October 1752 in Norwich, New London County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America, serve in the Revolutionary War?” or “When did my 2x great-grandfather, Samuel Dare, immigrate to the United States, eventually ending up in Deer Ridge, Lewis County,  Missouri, at the time of the 1860 census based on his stated birthplace of England?” A focused question will keep you on track and increase your chance of answering your question.

There are many websites that provide wonderful detail to guide you. One of the best is from the National Genealogical Society, How to Build a Family Tree.

Another great free source for all things family history is the FamilySearch Wiki.

[1] Fresno County, California, marriage certificate, Walton L. Davis-Edna L. Workman, 15 April 1931, George Brewster, Minister, Christian Church, Fresno.

[2] Missouri Department of Health, birth certificate, state file number 49675, (24 October 1910), Edna Leona Workman; Bureau of Vital Statistics, Jefferson; certified copy in researcher’s files.

California Department of Public Health, birth certificate, local registrar number 329, 15 June 1911, Walton Leslie Davis; Vital Statistics, Sacramento.