I was preparing for today’s class by reading the hand out and have a confession: I don’t use research logs. Shame on me! Don’t get me wrong, I have tried various methods. I totally understand why they are important. I want to use them. My problem is where to keep them so that I can use what I have put into them. I am hoping our speaker, since she mentioned them has some organizational tips. 

So, I did ask her and I also watched a GenealogyTV with Connie Knox and here is my take away. Make the log and your research plan one and the same and include the info you need for citations. You can do it on the computer or pencil and paper. If you Google Research Logs there are lots of templates that you can get for free and then you can modify them to personalize them to meet all of the above needs and work for you and then keep it with the family group info in my folders or notebooks. I am going to give it another try as I know that they are very helpful. I think I am going to need bigger notebooks and more of them and an organizational change of plans. Office Depot here I come.

As you know, I read a lot of history and try to combine that with the family history. Recently, as I was reading, I was trying to remember when I thought my ancestors had been in the country I was reading about. In this case it was Switzerland. I decided to review the history of that family and write it in the back of the book. Not just the dates but the locations that I am aware of as well. I am trying to sandwich my learning. Coming from both ends if you will. 

This is what I mean by that. I have tried to take my family history backwards as I know you should. Getting all of the information, evidence direct and indirect that I can to tell me where my ancestors were and when over time. Then I study the history of the American location during the time and see what I can learn about the groups that immigrated into the area when my ancestors were there. I am looking at 1700s, 1800s or earlier. Then I come at it from the other direction. What was going on in Switzerland or Scotland or The Netherlands, etc. in their history. As I read that I come across those dates that I wrote in the book and the names of locations. History then is more meaningful because the people in that history may have been my ancestors.

I don’t know if this is the right way to do the work but it is what I am trying now. I find it fascinating when to history research from immigration out of a location and into another match up. The history points to craftsmen leaving Scotland into Northern Ireland and then into Virginia for example and then my family history follows a similar pattern. Education was important to them and it is to me. Sure it would be nice to have direct evidence, some of which I have found through this process such as passenger lists, but the life the people might have lived is important as well.

Historical Maps would be helpful as well so that I can visualize the places the research is talking about. 

Then we come back to the most recent class, Collateral and Cluster research. This blog entry to go on for a long time so let me leave it with, they fit in here exactly. It is about finding the brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, etc that might give additional information to tell more of the story. One of the “non direct line’ of family just might list a name, date, location that your direct line left out. 

Add to this Cluster research where you are looking at the neighbors, church members, business associates, people immigrating from the same country, etc and you have the making of even more story to be added to your family history.  

What was the learning….we have heard it before….slow down and take it one step at a time.

  Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com