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  • New to this.. what's your checklist?

    I'm pretty new to this.. I started out just wanting to find a bit more information on a few people in the family and it's quickly become quite the hobby as it's so interesting when you discover a little nugget of info about someone. However, I often find that I end up spending hours on end, often going around in circles, maybe checking the same source more than once, skipping from one family member to the next and back.. certainly not efficient.

    I'm also slowly learning the various sources available and how to use them, but so far have probably been pretty limited in what I've used for research.

    So, my question is, do you all use a specific checklist or some-such, that you work through for each person to ensure your research is complete and thorough? I appreciate this may change somewhat depending on the location, ie. an ancestor from Ireland may have a slightly different checklist to one born in England (or perhaps not?).. what are all the sources you would typically use?

    Hoping you can share some words of wisdom and get me on the path to a more efficient, thorough research pattern

    Lee

  • #2
    Lee .............

    I don't have a checklist.


    I started off intending to do only immediate ancestors on our two trees, but then I found I wanted to know the parents of married-ins, and maybe their siblings. Then I wanted to know more about the siblings of the direct ancestors. But I still intended to keep it quite tight.

    But my daughter said she just was not interested in a dry old tree that consisted just of names and dates .............. her training as an anthropologist made her more interested in knowing HOW they'd lived, where they'd lived, etc.

    That led me into researching churches where people married, finding pictures etc etc.

    Then I would get side-tracked ............. why had the daughter of one of my ancestor's sisters married in London when they came from Buckinghamshire, to a man with a foreign name in the 1860s, and why did they almost immediately get on board a ship to New Zealand??? That was only one instance.

    Then there were the family stories passed down to OH and to myself ........... were they really true??? Well, no!! Or I still haven't found out.



    I do try to stick to one person, or at the very least to one generation of a family at a time ............. but then there are new records coming online all the time.


    I think you'll find that we all get side-tracked!



    BUT the important thing to keep records of all that you find, and WHERE you found the information.

    Some of us still keep paper records, that we file under family name or whatever makes sense to us. Others of us keep the records on the computer.

    The best advice that I think I can give you is to repeat KEEP A RECORD OF WHAT YOU FOUND AND WHERE YOU FOUND IT.
    My grandmother, on the beach, South Bay, Scarborough, undated photo (poss. 1929 or 1930)

    Researching Cadd, Schofield, Cottrell in Lancashire, Buckinghamshire; Taylor, Park in Westmorland; Hayhurst in Yorkshire, Westmorland, Lancashire; Hughes, Roberts in Wales.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Sylvia C View Post
      The best advice that I think I can give you is to repeat KEEP A RECORD OF WHAT YOU FOUND AND WHERE YOU FOUND IT.
      I don't know if you have found it yet, but our Reference Library (at the top of any page) includes a Getting Started Guide which among all its hints and tips is a link to our

      My desktop software of choice is Family Historian and in that I add an event e.g. census and then I can query it and quickly see who I have found in each census and where or who still needs a birth, death and marriage certificate or will. This also means not having to print out reams of paper which I did to begin with.

      I have several times tried to keep a research journal but end up with scribbled bits of paper and PostIts which mean not a lot further down the line.

      I am also not very rigorous in recording the source if it is a census since they can be easily found again, but am if it is an unusual event or took some time to track down.
      Caroline
      Caroline's Family History Pages
      Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

      Comment


      • #4
        I've just remembered a book which an enterprising genealogist has brought out:



        It's one of those ideas that you wish you had not only thought of, but did something about it!!
        Caroline
        Caroline's Family History Pages
        Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

        Comment


        • #5
          no check list for me, but I do tend to concentrate on the main lines and once I am back a few generations I don't follow siblings and their marriage/children, unless I am stuck or it is clear that they were very close (not that scientific), or they are looking interesting!

          I use ancestry, and just try and get a link full set of the usual documents for the key people in the tree, it records the sources for me, I am lazy!

          The London records I have I try and find schools, these do not come up on the ancestry hints very often (quite a few records need searching for)

          I check occupations and if possible would try to find anything related to this such as Kellys or newspapers. The newspapers have only been around ifor me in the last few years and are forever growing.

          I just synch to my PC using the FTM software.

          I have visited graveyards and taken photos of headstones, you can get lucky.

          I now have FMP, new to me, it was cheaper than a sub to the BNA and it uses the same data, just searches differently. FMP is good for finding births using mother maiden name, you can do this GRO but a search of only 4 years, and not for all periods, and you can also do it on free BMD but not all records are there.

          Just starting to write up some 'stories' which I have planned to do for years...and now being encouraged by the threads on here!

          and just got a few wills, now that they are £1.50, but they really haven't been much help to me.

          Lastly, I would say, do what pleases you and interests you, don't make it a chore have fun. It won't change the course of history if you have taken a wrong turn!
          Last edited by cbcarolyn; 09-02-20, 10:06.
          Carolyn
          Family Tree site

          Researching: Luggs, Freeman - Cornwall; Dayman, Hobbs, Heard - Devon; Wilson, Miles - Northants; Brett, Everett, Clark, Allum - Herts/Essex
          Also interested in Proctor, Woodruff

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Caroline View Post
            I've just remembered a book which an enterprising genealogist has brought out:



            It's one of those ideas that you wish you had not only thought of, but did something about it!!
            That link is not working for me Caroline.
            Kat

            My avatar is my mother 1921 - 2012

            Comment


            • #7
              Looking for something entirely different I came across this just now:

              Genealogy checklists - including the ULTIMATE genealogy worksheet
              Caroline
              Caroline's Family History Pages
              Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Katarzyna View Post
                That link is not working for me Caroline.
                Nor me - I wonder why!!

                Try this one: Family History Record Book by Sheridan Parsons
                Caroline
                Caroline's Family History Pages
                Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

                Comment


                • #9
                  I think you need somewhere to put your tree on and be able to add notes to . I use FTM but there are other ones available.

                  As said before keep a note of where you find things. I have been doing mine nearly 20 years and look at things now and have no idea where I got the info from.

                  Use places like Freebmd and Freereg, family search and you can look at Deceased on line without having a sub and if you live in the right area can get a load of info, Also look at wills, you will be surprised who left them.

                  Above all else enjoy it, its a hobby and if you don't touch your tree for a couple of weeks it will still be there.
                  Lin

                  Searching Lowe, Everitt, Hurt and Dunns in Nottingham

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    it can be a full time obsession!!

                    I started off as many do by looking at my parents/grandparents etc.. I now try to do a 'family' at a time, parents/childrens etc..and try to do many census entries as I can. I use FTM for my work as I can sync it with Ancestry & LDS. I have begun now to find out more about occupations that my forebears had and adding those to my tree to help bring it to life, any little snippit of info you find make a note of where you found it and why it is relevant to your relative. [it may be obvious to you, but might not be so obvious to others]

                    I have slowly gathered baptism/marriage and death cds for Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire where a lot of my relatives come from, over the last few years my own tree work has taken a bit of a back seat but with now doing a DNA test I'm adding more and more to my DNA tree to help locate relatives that are from my brickwalls.. non yet but I live in hope.
                    Julie
                    They're coming to take me away haha hee hee..........

                    .......I find dead people

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      On the attached link is how I organise my folders and files, within this you will see the checklists that I have made for myself, if you think these will be useful just send me a pm and I will send you over the template.

                      I recently shared online some pictures of my Family Tree Filing system and organisation and it proved to be popular amongst fellow Family History Researchers, so I thought I would expand and explai…
                      My Family History Blog Site:

                      https://chiddicksfamilytree.com

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        forgot to say I add things to my www.ancestry.co.uk tree, and sometimes link to citations on there.
                        Carolyn
                        Family Tree site

                        Researching: Luggs, Freeman - Cornwall; Dayman, Hobbs, Heard - Devon; Wilson, Miles - Northants; Brett, Everett, Clark, Allum - Herts/Essex
                        Also interested in Proctor, Woodruff

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I have a mental checklist. Births, deaths (kill them off before you do anything else, no point looking if they died age 6) marriages. Census if relevant. Parish registers. Google - you would be surprised what comes up. From a simple google of a mis-spelled hamlet name on a census, I found a third cousin I never knew existed and we each had half of the jigsaw.

                          I agree - record your sources carefully, boring chore though this may be.

                          OC

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                          • #14
                            I would add scouring the online catalogues of relevant county record offices for references to various documents they hold. I do blanket searches using individual surnames and also village names. Sometimes there are abstracts of certain records and these can contain a mine of useful snippets.
                            I reinforce what OC has said about Google - and remember, new online info is added daily, so repeat google searches frequently!
                            Free online resources vary from county to county. Lots of resource sites for Norfolk, but many other counties are less well served.

                            Jay
                            Janet in Yorkshire



                            Genealogists never die - they just swap places in the family tree

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Skipping from one family member to another is mandatory in my book, it's always the sibling of someone I'm looking at who is the interesting one. They are often the only one I can find an a census too!
                              http://www.flickr.com/photos/50125734@N06/

                              Joseph Goulson 1701-1780
                              My sledging hammer lies declined, my bellows too have lost their wind
                              My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd, and in the dust my vice is laid

                              Comment


                              • #16
                                Research whoever and whenever you like. I jump from branch to branch all the time. Sometimes this is lack of records, new records being added or new info is found. Or just going over old information and realising something once irrelevant now has meaning.....ie wittnesses on marriage records or misrecording of a name at burial.

                                I have a pair of german ancestors who just disappear from their home city. There is a similarly named couple in the burials of their native city, but the name was wrong for the wife. Turns out the middle name was a corruption of her mother's, and her step father's name was recorded but crossed out. This only became apparent it was the correct record once i learned the mother had remarried.

                                So always go over old notes and information, you never know what will make sense.

                                I generally only follow the direct line, and the aunts and uncles. I don't generally bother with cousins, as the tree is enormous enough already. The only time i track down cousins and and any other connection is when the aunt/uncle are difficult to trace, or i can't get anywhere looking back on the family and researching all members often gives information or clues about the direct line. Sometimes you will find out information from people who haven't researched as far back as you, from a collateral line.

                                Comment


                                • #17
                                  Thanks for all the input, I'll be sure to take on board what everyone has contributed

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