THERE’S A CHECKLIST FOR THAT

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[1]



Exhaustive Research 

When researching a difficult ancestor do you ever wonder “have I checked EVERY source that might contain information about this person”? “What could I be missing?”

I have good news for you. There is a checklist for that! There are many. If one does not suit your style of research, try another one. A quick Google search brought up 1,750,000,000 results. That is a bit much to deal with.

Good Sources for Checklists

The Mid-Continent Public Library has a simple one-page list that I have used.[2] The National Institute for Genealogy offers a similar two-page checklist in a slightly different format.[3] Family Tree Magazine also has a one-page checklist that is quite comprehensive, including wolf-scalp bounties.[4] It does not include a space for the ancestor’s name, and is a PDF so you would have to scan and save it to the ancestor’s file. Roots of Kinship offers a complex Excel-based checklist that is incredibly comprehensive, and useful if you want to sort multiple ways, but setting it up seems to demand more time than I am willing to invest.[5]

Use a spreadsheet!

As my research has become more in-depth I have looked for something more comprehensive but simple to use. Enter our friend Thomas MacEntee, with his Genealogy Research Checklist.[6] It is available in Microsoft Word, PDF, and Excel formats. If you have a subscription to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, you can view his webinar, Did I get Everything: Creating a Checklist for Genealogy Research. I had trouble downloading the form from Thomas’ site, Abundant Genealogy, but I was able to get it using the link in the webinar syllabus, www.legacyfamilytree.net/checklist.xls. That could be a problem with the internet connection I have at my home and the large size of the form.

Thomas recommends using a form for each ancestor and saving it with your Research Log in the ancestor’s file. I set up a sheet for my maternal Grandmother, whom I knew well, and deleted the records I knew were not applicable. That reduced the size of the form and made it easier to navigate. Thomas does not recommend that, reasoning that you might find out later that records you did not expect would relate to your ancestor, might be applicable. Right away I could see that there were significant gaps to fill in my desktop genealogy software. Having just watched Cyndi Ingle’s webinar, Record As You Go, Cite As You Go, & File As You Go [7], (it is free through 30 April 2021), I restrained myself.

Thomas’ Genealogy Research Checklist is organized by type of record; those you might find around the house, those located in archives, business records, court records, and many other categories.

He suggests that you go through the list placing a checkmark in the Applicable? Column, then sorting the list so that all those checked are at the top of the list.



Ica Lee Hahn

PRIMARY GROUP

RECORD SET

APPLICABLE?

START DATE

COMPLETE DATE

Around the House

Birth Records

Around the House

Calling Cards

Around the House

Death Records

ü

Around the House

Diaries

Around the House

Family Bible


You can see that I have checked Death Records in the “Around the House” category because I know that I have a Certified Copy of my Grandmother’s Death Certificate in a hanging file. Without looking, I do not remember whether I have added an image of it to my desktop genealogy software. I need to go back and check Family Bible because again I do not remember whether I have added the images from that Bible to the desktop software.

My first use of this tool will be making sure that the records of all the ancestors in my maternal line that are going to be a part of my Kinship Determination Project are complete. I am excited to begin!
Let me know if you try using a checklist, and whether you think it is helpful.

Thank you to Thomas MacEntee for permitting me to use his Genealogy Research Checklist and information from his webinar in this blog post.


Barbara Mattoon   



[1] Image courtesy pngaaa.com.

[2] https://www.mymcpl.org/sites/default/files/06-0118%20Research%20Checklist.pdf

[3] http://www.cm.genealogicalstudies.com/cm/1forms/amet/ResChecklist_2pg.pdf

[4] https://www.familytreemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Records-Checklist.pdf?x44808

[5] https://rootsofkinship.com/2016/01/17/genealogy-research-checklist/

[6] https://genealogybargains.com/free-genealogy-research-checklist-abundant-genealogy/

[7] https://familytreewebinars.com/download.php?webinar_id=1743


Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 5, 2022 at 10:42 AM

    Thank you Barbara. This is a really good list - trying to get my arms around it.

    ReplyDelete

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