what am I missing when making new discoveries?

[scottsaunders]

Hey,

I have been researching my family tree on and off for about 8 years now and have made some decent progress with putting together names, places and dates when connecting the dots etc. The majority of my work has been from using the major boards such as FMP and Ancestry which has been great and really giving me the name and dates as a starting point however there is a growing feeling that perhaps something is being missed.

My strategy seems to follow the following process :

1) Identify the persons name, approx birth, marriage where possible and death.
2) Narrow down the dates to confirm its the right person before ordering any certificates.
3) Search the census records where possible.
4) Move on

Now these 4 steps seem to cover a great deal of info however I am wondering what others do ? is there some kind of repository of information being missed with details of school, work records, medical details etc... I really don't know here so have just thrown some ideas out on the last sentence

Any help or advise would be greatly received as this is really something that i love doing however I get so far in, discover a load of data and don't appear to know what to do it with it to make it most useful.

Thanks for reading.

Scott

 

[barbarajoh]

More records are becoming available online all the time, Scott but local archives are where to go to get the extra items to give a rounder picture of your ancestor. Is this what you are wanting to do?

Maps to find out where they were living and where they moved from and to and looking at neighbours to see what kind of work they were doing are some ideas too.

Newspapers to see if they were involved in any interesting news at the time or even had the best leek at a village show all make you feel you have a better idea of how they were living

Hope that helps a wee bit?

Barbara

 

[scottsaunders]

its tips like that which really will help me and I don't know what I don't know if that make sense?

Just felt like I was missing something major which was stopping me to making a real connection to the person and piecing together the puzzle.



Massive thank you .

 

[barbarajoh]

You are very welcome.
I volunteer in archives and as it is a rural area, people have got very keen on going round the farms or where the farm or cottage used to be where their ancestors worked on for a term and then moved on. Old pictures of where they used to live are popular too and knowing that people in Berwickshire are likely to also work in East Lothian due to the proximity helps too.

I have found myself going into fields and taking pictures of shepherd's cottages with only 3 walls standing and thistles and nettles a mile high for our members who live too far away to visit. So worth getting in touch with local people through archives. As there must be a few nutters like me out there!

You will learn what there is to find as you keep going!

Just putting your ancestor's name in google with inverted commas can also bring up surprising things.

Barbara

 

[Ellie7]

You can use Bing search engine ,put in the Town ,and you are likely to find old Photos .I love to find the old town signposts. Also ebay can have old postcards of the places you are interested in. Genuki have some good info on places and early data .Some counties have there Archives online ,I have found a few early records through that .Also http://www.worldcat.org/ and https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en some have lovely old photos and data .

Ellie

 

[Ellie7]

Are you also following the siblings ,as middle names can come in handy when you are looking for an earlier marriage.


Ellie