Chris Hagerman: Two Face: The Flip Side roller coaster at Six Flags America. CC 3.0 Tactics, Strategies, Plans & Practice I've been researching a lot lately, but not for my book on my mother's McBees, or even my "52 Ancestor" project . Those are not forgotten; just on the back burner for now. Instead, I decided to fill a hole in the tree, which has our grandchild as the base person. When we're all gone, it will be his. Because I knew very little about his mother's father's line, I decided to tackle that. It is 100% Russian Jews and we are using DNA as a major clue to families long separated by migration and other historical events. But there is   a major roadblock: endogamy . Endogamy is  marriage within a specific group as required by custom or law . Jews in the Russian Empire were confined to the "Pale of Settlement" and could not live in cities or large towns. As a result, intermarriage normal in small communities was magnified, and lasted...

Free public domain CC0 image, courtesy RawPixel Crack the Nut, or First Things First What is your  greatest challenge when writing up your research work? For me, it was always writing citations . Key step for me to resolving this was to change my habits and make writing the citation the first thing I do, right in the planning stage. Lead with a Citation How does that make sense, when I've not even found the source I'm looking for? One of the first steps in a research project is planning; narrowing the topic (research question), gathering the context (history and locality), then ranking the possible sources of the needed information by ease of access, reliability, accessibility, cost, and chance of success in answering the question. In the planning stage, we have identified the databases or record groups we want to consult, so this is the right time to craft a citation. All the information we need, except for the specific records you will find is available, so Just Do It Now. A...

  image credit: bunditinay -stock.adobe.com My 2024 Genealogy Resolutions For many people, year-end is a time of reflection on the past year and looking ahead to how we hope the next year will unfold. As I have worked on my genealogy development activities for my Kinship Determination Project during the past few days, I have thought about how I can be more effective going forward. Making genealogy resolutions for 2024 is a result of that thought. First: I will write a Research Plan for each project or new phase of a project. No longer will I just dive into acquiring names, dates, or facts in a haphazard fashion, hoping to emerge with a finished Research Report. (More on that later.) Second: I will create a complete citation for every date, fact, or other piece of information that is not general knowledge when I find it. I will not allow myself to think, “Oh, I’ll remember where I saw that.” Third: I will consult the original record whenever I can possibly find it. An abstract ...