Genealogy 101+: What Do You Know?

Thursday, March 15, 2012

This blog series is my effort to share my genealogy research experience with novice researchers who wish to study their family's history.  The series begins at this link.

If you read the first blog entry you learned that, in my experience, you will have the most success with your genealogy if you focus your interest to a single question when you begin.  What exactly do you want to know?  If your answer is that you want to make a great big family tree that includes all of your tens of thousands of ancestors, you're getting way ahead of yourself.  And, names and dates without knowing something about them is really pretty worthless.  Refocus!  Why are you studying your family's history?

As an example, I'll use a question that I wanted to know something about when I started.  Why does our family live in Wisconsin?  By this I mean, how did it come to pass that my ancestors moved here and stayed in this state rather than Missouri, Illinois, or Texas?

When I began my family history study about 25 years ago, the oldest known (known to me) ancestors had all lived in Wisconsin for as long as I knew and we still did.  Why did they live here?  Who came here first and why did they stay?

I was ready to begin my search.  Now I could start with myself and identify what I know.  This would hopefully give me some clues to answering the question.

Here's what I knew.

1) I would be focusing on my father's side of the family because I knew that my mother came to America in the 1950s and my other relatives were already living here then.
 
2) My earliest ancestors I knew about were my great-grandfathers.  One was a veterinarian who lived with my great-grandmother in Green Bay and he had a sister who lived in Fond du Lac.  It was believed he was Irish.  I remembered my great-grandmother and "Auntie".    

3)  The other great grandfather had lived in Wausaukee.  I knew he was Irish.

4) None of them were still living.
 
5) I had some old unidentified photos I found in a box in the basement that included pictures of these great-grandparents and some idea of the time period in which they lived.

Essentially, that is all I knew then.  But, I was fortunate because it was probably more than some people know about their family.

What could I do with this knowledge toward answering my genealogy question?  Using this information and the pictures, I could ask my relatives what they know about these ancestors.  I could start by asking my parents, aunts and uncles, and any other older relatives.  The trick to good success is in how you approach this next step. 

But before you do that, your "assignment" is to brainstorm what you already know to be true relative to your question.  Just write it all down.  You don't have to use any special forms or software programs to do this.

Next post I'll give you great tips to make the most of those interviews of your relatives to guarantee that you won't put them in a dazed, glassy-eyed stupor.  Go to the next post here.