My question always as I move through my family history is where to look next. That doesn’t just mean what resources, but when you get stuck and decide to move on, who do you move on to. How do you do it in your family history?

• Do you move vertically down the tree to keep the tree aligned? (it is not easy being so concrete/sequential!)
• Do you go vertically as many generations back as possible?
• Do you look for all the people in the same general state?
• Do you look for military records, one war at a time?
• Do you look for occupations using resources that could fill in details for all possible?
• Do you have another method?

I always wondered if there were other teachers in my family history. I knew what my grandparents did; one owned a garden and yarn shop and was a piano teacher and pianist for silent movies, another was the secretary of the Elks Club, and another had several jobs including as a cowboy, railroad employee, and as a college custodian. But what did they do in those occupations and what about those that came before them?

To me that information tells more of the story about their lives. How they might have lived and spent their time or maybe why they moved from point A to point B. How did they get started in those jobs and make the choices to do that work? It goes beyond the vital statistics. In some cases, it was how the couple met.

On some census reports it will give you the basic information, farmer, house carpenter, salesman, etc. I have found information in old city directories. The old ones gave family, jobs, address a lot more than we can or might want to put on the directory today.

I am looking forward to our next class where I might discover what it means to be a “section drivertion [?] for the railroad.” His father was a well driller, but I don’t know for whom he worked. Before him was my 4x GG who it says “had several county offices in the early 1830’s including commissioner of school lands.” That sounds interesting. And lots of farmers.

I have used MyHeritage recently more than usual but what more is there to find? I have railroaders and family who were early settlers in New England. All those classes are coming up as well as the records at NARA in Seattle. I guess my “next step” approach is to use the learning for a class as best I can until the next class where I try some new ideas.

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com