Key in a door; public domain. Courtesy of Picryl. In genealogy and family history, context is "the examination of individual lives within the framework of a broader history" [1]. Context is Key Context is key because  context unlocks meaning in the records we uncover , and leads us to more (and better) records and collections. For instance, finding a land description and platting it is step one, then when the plat is on a map along with the neighbors, we can see who the ancestor knew, worked alongside, attended church with, and who the singles might have married. Learning the geology of the area leads to understanding what crops were grown, and so how the land shaped the daily lives of those living and working on it. Life on the Great Plains is very different from the hollers of Kentucky or the coastal plains of the East. People often migrated in groups, and in general chose to move to an area where their skills and knowledge would be useful.  Context for land acquisitio...

Courtesy of PicPick Unknown Unknowns US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously said There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.  The three realms of knowledge which Rumsfeld cited are what we can explore by creating research reports for our ancestors and others such as members of the FAN Club, F amily, Friends, A ssociates and N eighbors. Last Monday, MaryLynn illustrated the value of researching more of the FANs of your ancestors, in The Shot Heard Round The World .  At the beginning of the year, I wrote about my plans for 2025 genealogy research , including research reports for my closest 52 ahnentafals, one every week. I'm a bit behind, and many of the "reports" are just placeholders, I've already found so much. I anticipate that the rest of this year will be full of discoveries of pr...

Battle of Lexington and Concord, from a Public domain scan of the vintage historic postcard by Picryl. By the rude bridge that arched the flood,     Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood,     And fired the shot heard round the world. (1) April 19 is the semiquincentennial, the 250th  Anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the beginning of the Revolutionary War . From our grade school history classes, most of us remember about Paul Revere and his midnight ride to warn the colonists that the British were coming. It was at Lexington and Concord that the first skirmishes occurred and the "shot heard round the world" was fired. When you think about events that happened during an ancestor's lifetime, do you wonder if your ancestor was present at that event?  I do. This was during my fourth great-grandfather Jonah Stow's lifetime and through my early research of his military records, I knew that he wasn...

[Valorie] In our research, we're always seeking to establish identity, relationships, locality, occupations, and most of all, to understand the lives of our forebears. WHO includes everyone, not just our "direct" ancestors , but their families, friends, enemies, neighbors, fellow congregants and club members, colleagues, competitors, fellow travelers and "kin," however they defined that. We know where to find them—census (including agriculture and manufacturing schedules), tax lists, newspaper articles, city directories, club rosters, church records, family photos, scrapbooks, county histories and so on. Critical, specific information was the plot of land where they made a living, alongside neighbors and relatives.   Where? MAPS How about maps as a tool to help ? In preparation for today's workshop on platting , I watched a very old Legacy webinar by Mark Lowe of Kentucky and Tennessee, about how to use the plats to learn more about our ancestors than I thou...

AI generated by Pixlr 30 November 2024 The Tingle Don't you love that moment in your research when you realize, that YES, you were right when you went out on a limb, and found something not in other public trees? And then, when you find that some of the supporting research work ahead has already been done? O f course you soon also realize that that means you are probably related to this family in multiple ways, which is why some of the work has been completed. Filling In The Map Or is that just me who forgets research from a year or more ago? This is the mixed blessing of pedigree collapse [intermarriage in small communities], FAN research [ f amily, friends, a ssociates, n eighbors], and tracking down DNA matches [people with whom you share significant sized DNA segments]! I dare you to add intriguing DNA matches to your tree, and figure out how you connect. There are so many rewards to taking the chance. One of them is revisiting old research. Tool Kit With this Burnett line, I ...

Renton Highlands Library:  https://kcls.org/locations/renton-highlands/ Starting a new endeavor is magic! Recently, we ( SKCGS ) were asked to open a Genealogy Help Desk at the Renton Highlands Library, pictured above. Two of our newer volunteers have been there on the second Thursday mornings beginning this September. I was privileged to be there last Thursday and help a brand new genealogy researcher get started. He walked in with a copy of GenHelp Desk flyer which he picked up at a local senior center.  When I asked what his interests were, he said, his whole family. And I know that when starting something new, there are a lot of hard ways to do it. Please show me the best way. It is not often that I'm asked for advice! It was a pleasure to walk with him over to the KCLS computers, where he navigated to Ancestry.com , to create a new free tree. Ancestry really does make it easy to get started when some basic facts are known. Along the way, I explained that while he may ge...

Village, Generated with Bing ImageCreator AI 5 October 2024 What is the " basic unit of society "? It is often said to be the family. However, even in so-called Western societies, where families are often defined as a husband, wife and their children, about half the families I find in records do not meet the monogamy  standard. Often one of the partners has died or divorced, and there are other family members living with them—parents or other relatives of one or more of the partners, former neighbors or their children, "fictive kin," such as a close neighbor or relative of an in-law or former spouse. FAN Principle The more we follow the FAN principle [1] , and research all the people in and around the family, the more strongly we find that the basic unit is the village or neighborhood . While people do occasionally move somewhere new all by themselves, that is often impelled by personal danger of some sort, such as a crime or other threat. Mostly, people moved with...

Best Reason to Throw a Party The best excuse to clean your house , I once read, is to ready it for a party . While cleaning house, I thought, is the same true about "writing it up"? Writing the stories of our ancestors and relatives is the culmination of our work. When we know that our place is welcoming to guests, we feel free to celebrate; telling stories of the past unlocks the lives of our families to all who hear them. Writing the stories is t he best excuse to research. Write while researching so that that your thoughts have somewhere to go‒directly into the notes, before they evaporate. Writing soothes the itch in the brain instead of sending us down rabbit holes. Now is a great time to get started writing, in preparation for Family History Month in October . Courtesy of the National Genealogical Society Writing tests our research and thinking It is while writing that holes in the story are exposed, inconsistencies glare, and leaps of logic fall flat. If our analysis...

Have you been spoiled by good fortune? Consider Joining Our New Study Group! Courtesy andreas_fischler; Creative Commons 2.0 Sometimes it is really easy to find records on the big genealogy sites, the hints make sense, and we begin to think that research is easy. So easy, that we may forget what to do when the ripe fruit isn't hanging easily in reach. That's when a study group would come in handy ,  to remind us of basic principles of research. Or for beginners on the family history journey to learn those habits and practices from the very best, right at the start. Recent Example I had given up with Seth Willis of Harrison County, Missouri, an ancestor of one of my McBee uncle's DNA matches, until I thought about what to focus on for the new Research Study Group, beginning Wednesday, 14 August . Seth was born early enough that there are no records of parentage, and his probable father's obituary does not mention him. So I created a timeline of facts and sources to se...