Google Your Family

Googling for your family can reap some huge rewards towards unlocking mysteries in your research. Recently, a book was published by Daniel M. Lynch titled "Google Your Family Tree". I immediately purchased it so that I can learn how to drill down and better filter my searches. I received the book just before the holidays and haven't had a chance to get very far with it. What a wealth of information it contains! Everything from a simple search to using Google Maps. I cannot wait to get deeper into this. Google Books is another excellent way to delve into finding your ancestors in obscure places which the author explains on page 103. I have used this feature for some time now and it is constantly being added to. Of course, copyright laws inhibit full views, but you can locate the repositories of where you might locate a book of interest. Perhaps your local library can obtain you a copy through inter library loan. Sometimes snippet views are listed or partial pages. Full views are books that the copyrights have expired which leads to a big bonus. I have had huge successes with my research and have found my ancestors in various places that I am sure would have been overlooked. Case in point: ancestor John Tillman died in 1826 and left a will in Warren County, New Jersey listing all of his heirs. A book published called "Acts of the Legislature of the State of New Jersey" recalls a case 10 years later in 1836 where the heirs are petitioning the court to allow them to sell the land that was left to the widow due to hardships. They won their case, but the huge piece of information that was obtained in this article was the full family listing of names and relationships and a death of one of the heirs which would have never been recorded anywhere else. If I hadn't located the will originally, this would have been that breakthrough we are all looking for. It's another piece of that evidence to prove our families accurately or steer you into the original records. Subsequently, I have located other court cases with other ancestors and a Biography of my ancestor, Andrew Smalley that mentions and confirms my suspicions of who his parents are. All in all, you can learn a lot and find information that most likely you would have never found otherwise.

Sources

When I first started out in my research, I was naive and uninformed about the data I was collecting. As I grew further into this endeavor I kept reading and hearing about source citation. What is that? Why are the experts emphasizing this every chance they got? I had to find out more about this. What I understood was that each date, story, name gathering, and the photocopies that were adding up in my files was totally useless! How can it mean anything to anyone? There was no integrity to my research and I had to address it immediately if I was going to continue with my quest and do it right. The best book at the time available was "Cite Your Sources" by Lackey which was added to my library. I learned that there are varying degrees to sources; Primary sources are records that were created at the time of an event. Secondary sources are records that were created a significant amount of time after an event occurred. Circumstantial is probable evidence based on a collection of facts that, when considered together, can be used to infer a conclusion about something unknown. Each one of these items should be carefully considered when noting each document. I have become more diligent to record where I got my information, who it was produced by and when. It will help you in the long run when you need to revisit that item again. Since then, a book was published by Elizabeth Shown Mills called, "Evidence!" which has been now considered the methodology all genealogists prefer to use since it breaks it down further. The book is artfully written and explains how to cite each individual document you have gathered. It should be on the top of your list of books that you acquire. The purpose in this post is not to be nagging, but to prevent redoing your hard work and to make your information valuable evidence. Name gathering is only that, and all it produces in the end is perpetuating inaccurate information that will be copied over and over.....