"The past is a foreign country" -- opening phrase of The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, 1953. I have long avoided researching my ancestors pre-1850 because I didn't want to battle with the records in this foreign land. My excuse was the *lack* of records, but really there are lots of records, but they are *different* records; not what I'm used to searching, and not with which I'm comfortable. Now that I'm digging into the family of my third great-grandfather, born about 1799, there is no avoiding this foreign country, beginning with tick marks and tax lists.  Clinch-Powell rivers basin, Tennessee portion : Anderson, Campbell, Claiborne, Grainger, Hancock, Hawkins, and Union counties, Tennessee [1] Putting Names to the Tick Marks In my work on my third-great-grandparents George Henry McBee and Martha Willis McBee, it is necessary to find each member of the family in every census to explore the history of this family. Anything less is not complete basic research

[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 s

courtesy Pixabay Sheer Joy of Research  Sometimes you've got the bull by the horns and rush along researching recklessly, breathlessly. That's fun! But we all know that details are missed this way and sometimes, in your hurry, you take the wrong road, pick the wrong parents, mix the records of two people with the same name. . .we've all been there!  It's fun, but there is sometimes quite a bit of cleanup to do after the rampage.   Professional Approach Professional researchers do it differently. Time is of the essence, and getting results efficiently is what creates success. So the pros will plan their work by working out a research question or a series of questions  with the client , and then begin by  doing a literature and record set survey.  Then is it time to assess what websites will yield the information needed? What repositories will need to be visited, or contacted? After the planning stage, the professional will consult the client for any fine-tuning. Focus Mo

  Anna Wood Dyer Anna Wood Dyer Biography At a recent virtual meeting, someone asked if others had one ancestor who had inspired them either to start family history or to keep researching.  It didn’t take me long to think of my gggrandmother Anna Wood Dyer as my inspiration.  After briefly relating my discoveries about her, someone suggested she would make a good blog topic. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll dust off and update one of the biographies I’ve written about her.”  Looking back at the discoveries and development of her life story I realize something else—the timeline of my growth as a researcher.  Throughout this family history quest, Anna has been the most elusive with the least information available.  And yet, at this point I personally feel I know her better because I have had to learn so much about her environment and the events that must have impacted her life. Anna has never seemed like a brick wall, only a weight bearing wall around which a family grew.  I can se