How to Avoid Quitting Your Family History Research - Trace Your Family Genealo

[Marlon Christian]

Being able to get a new clue or a link in your family research gives
new signs of hope of finally tracing your family history. Its a common
reaction that gives you thrills of excitement but sometimes you have
to control your emotion for the possibilities of let downs. You might
not handle desperation and will discourage you to go on with your
family research. Things like these happen probably more times than you
expect. Before leaping with joy you better keep your cool and follow
up your new evidence with more proofs.
Below are some theories that most people commonly use and end up
quitting because they lack the ideas of finding possibilities and
investigating further more. Do not rely on the data that you have
gathered easily. If you have easily acquired some useful resources of
your family history, its advisable to make independent studies about
the data you have in hand. By doing this, you are unlocking mysteries
and making your family research more accurate.
Always check the number of marriage
Never conclude that the children have a common mother or father. If
you are basing your research from the man's point of view, the
children could be off springs from other women. They could come from
this present wife, or his wife previously or even a wife after the one
you have found. Remember that parentage is one of the hardest things
to document, unless you know for sure. Women died in childbirth all
the time. It was not uncommon for a man to have 2 or more wives.
If you can't find a marriage record to support your family research
its maybe because of these reasons:
- A lot of early marriages were not documented at the time of the
marriage. It could have taken 5 years or so before the marriage could
be written down in a courthouse. - There might have not been a
courthouse around or even a church; lots of early marriages took place
in homes. - Hundreds of records were burned during the Civil War.
Extend your family history research and consider every possible turn
of events in the past
Don't always assume that your ancestors came from the same state that
their neighbors came from. Family genealogy includes possibilities of
migration. In this case migration routes were basically the same but
not every person follow the same route. You have to research further.
If you don't find your ancestor in the next census record and you
assume it's because they were old and died, don't just assume. Yes,
most people did live the normal life span but people did live to a
much older age also.
You have to research further, look at the closeness of their homes,
how each of them named their children, and court records to see if
they witnessed each other's documents.
Don't assume that your Jr. you found has the exact same name as Sr.
Years ago the words aunt, uncle, Jr., Sr., and cousin were also used
when the individual was no relation; in other words they were used
very loosely. For example, you may have found land records that have
Jr. and Sr. listed but these 2 men just happen to have the same name
so to distinguish between the two, Jr. and Sr. were used.
Do not always assume that the name of an individual is a boy or girl's
name. Parents sometimes just liked a name and to us it sounds like a
girl but back then it was a boy. Some names years ago were originally
boys name but now they are girls. Parents also named their children
after a famous person or a long ago relative.
Don't always assume that a female that has the same last name as her
father isn't married. Women did marry men that had the same last name
as they did. This happened a lot back when household were scattered
far apart and relation lived fairly close to one another; cousins
married distant cousins and cousin's married distant uncles or aunts.
Keep in mind that divorced women did sometimes take back their
original name and widows sometimes did the same.
Don't assume that your ancestor died in the same place he or she was
born and never moved around. It wasn't uncommon for individuals to
move their families many time but as they did get older, most moved
back to live closer to their family. The best way of working on this
is to create a time line and research many of the areas that they
lived.
If your ancestor lived in one town or county and then you loose them,
don't just assume that they picked up and moved. There are other
reasons you may have lost them. The county that your ancestor lived
could have been broken up into several counties or they could of lived
on the line dividing 2 counties. You have to research the surrounding
counties.
Being a genealogist or family historian, assumptions is what keeps the
research going but you have to recognize the trick as an assumption
and prove or disprove them with further evidence.