We are about half-way through the latest round of our study groups for the book Mastering Genealogical Proof, by Tom Jones. Therefore, registration is now open for the next Mastering Genealogical DOCUMENTATION study group. (The titles and book covers are very similar so I’m trying to avoid confusion.)
The study group is designed to be a beginner/low-intermediate level class to study the book. We will cover the principles outlined in the text as well as discuss the workbook questions.
This go-round we will be offering three sessions: Wednesdays at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern led by Cyndi Ingle of Cyndi’s List, 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern led by Cari Taplin, and 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern led by Cyndi. (Please adjust for your time zone). Groups begin on September 27, 2023 and run 7 weeks, (plus optional 8th week). Each class will be about an hour and we will meet using Zoom.
Some sites may not call it a “catalog,” but nearly all genealogy sites have a way for you to search their holdings, whether or not they are a subscription site.
Findmypast, for example calls the catalog “All record sets”:
Findmypast “All record sets”
When you click on “All record sets,” you will find a page similar to what we’ve seen before.
Findmypast “All record sets”
At the top, there is a search box. Along the left, there are some filters you can use to narrow down your results. Let’s take a look at an example from my research. My Sly line came from Wiltshire, England to the U.S. in the 1840s. Let’s narrow down the catalog at Findmypast to see how many record sets they have that might help me learn more about births for my Sly ancestors.
Findmypast search for “birth” and filtered by Wiltshire, England between 1800 and 1850.
In my search example above, there are 14 records sets that I can examine that might help me learn more about my Slys from Wiltshire. At Findmypast, the number of results changes as you type. There’s no waiting to hit “search” to see how many results you might have to wade through. When I search by the surname Sly, and first names of Susanna and William for the parents, there are 7 results.
There are 7 results when I’ve narrowed down the search options.
It doesn’t matter what a site calls it, there is going to be a way to look at the various collections in a site rather than just searching from the main screen.
Starting with the catalog will be a more targeted approach for your searches. By being deliberate with your searching, you can be assured you are looking at the right collections for your exact question. This is especially true for larger websites with many collections and databases such as Ancestry and FamilySearch. And if you are working with more common names, searching the large websites from the front page may not bring the results you really want to the top of the results list. You’ll have to dig, and filter, and narrow, and widen. I’m not saying you can’t do that, but you should also do more pointed, deliberate searches in specific collections, databases, and record sets.
We could go through just about any genealogical website and demonstrate the same things. Get very focused with your research and utilize catalogs to find the collection that makes the most sense to your research.
We will start a new topic next week. Until then, happy searching.
The FamilySearch website has several different aspects to it such as the Family Tree, records, images, books, the research wiki, and more. Ninety-nine percent of the time, my first stop is the catalog.
The Catalog is found under Search.
When I am planning my research, or wondering what records might be available for a given location, I always start with the catalog. It’s just the way I work. You might prefer to start with the Wiki or the records or images. This is just how I learned it back when I was a “baby genealogist” and it makes sense to me. You find the catalog under the Search tab. I nearly always put in a location to get started.
I start by typing in the county, and the catalog brings up the places that match that name. Lucky for us, there’s apparently only one county in the United States named Audrain. Once you click on that location, you are then taken to the page that has all of the topics available for that location.
You’ll notice, on the left are various filters you can use to narrow down your results. However, in the main section on the right, you can see all of the topics (see red box on the right in the screenshot above). You can see the topics such as biography, census, church records, land and property, probate, vital records, and so on. Clicking on vital records gives you the following options:
If those records have been incorporated into a larger database, you might see a link to that database on the page:
This one tells us that the Audrain marriages are included in a larger database. Usually I will click on that link and see if the record I’m seeking can be found quickly. However, they don’t always show up and I’ll go “old school” and click through the digital microfilm. This sometimes happens because of handwriting/indexing issues, or because this particular film hasn’t been indexed, or probably a number of other reasons I am unaware of.
A search through the database does indeed bring up the record I am seeking.
Martha Mitchell, daughter of Thomas Mitchell, married William Long in Audrain County in 1878. The index entry shows a camera icon which, when clicked, takes you directly to the image.
Sometimes, you will not be taken to the image because they haven’t gotten everything connected. But you will usually be given enough information in the index to find the record on the appropriate digitized microfilm.
If you click on the camera icon, you will be taken to the digitized microfilm that you can “scroll” through just as if you were looking at the microfilm.
Those are the basics of using the FamilySearch Catalog. There is a lot more to the FamilySearch site, and we may come back to that in a future series. We will stick with catalogs for now. Next time we will look at a few others and see how they are very similar in function.
Ancestry (other websites do this too) has provided users with some filters to help narrow search results. Ancestry also provides this nice “Jump back in” section on the main search screen. This provides you with easy access to recently used databases. If you’ve been following along, I’ve been showing examples from the Audrain County, Missouri, obituaries collections.
From the main search screen, I’m going to start a new search for Thomas Mitchell in Missouri. Thomas Mitchell is a very common name, so we will then use the filters to help narrow our results.
Main search page starting our search for Thomas Mitchell.
At the time of writing this post, a simple search for Thomas Mitchell in Missouri returned over 380k results! That’s too many. We need to narrow down the results to something more manageable.
Too many results to be useful!
To work with the filters, click on the pencil icon above the list of filters on the left. You can slide the little button on the slider bars under his name and location to get results that are “exact” so “Thomas” only, no Toms, for example. You can also add any other information you know about the person, date of birth or death, parents’ or spouse’s names, etc. You can also narrow down the results to a certain geographic collection under “collection focus.”
For our example here, I am going to add one parameter to start with, Thomas’s wife’s name: Angeline.
I’ve added ‘Angeline’ to the spouse’s name.
Adding Angeline reduced our results to 43k instead of 388k. That’s a big reduction, but still too many results to manage. Continue adding details that you know or utilize the filters on the left to narrow your focus to a type of record. Setting everything to “exact” gets us down to 22 results.
My system is to narrow down the results one filter at a time. Then I might back up and change a different filter leaving a previous one set on “broad” just to see what kind of different results I can get. You never know when an index might have a typo or have run into difficult handwriting. You also never know when an original record might have an error in it. Conducting searches using a variety of filter changes can help you find some of those records that may have been overlooked.
Next time, we will look at some websites other than Ancestry.
We all skip and skim and scan and think we are “reading.” It is just part of how the human brain works. The brain wants to do as little work as possible to conserve energy. It is part of how our species has evolved over time. So we have to work really hard to act against that instinctual desire to be efficient. You have to stop and make yourself read and understand what has been written about various databases. This can often answer questions you’ve formed such as “Why am I not finding a record I think I should be finding?” Reading the “about this database” section might inform you that the county your working in was not included in the database, for example.
The “stuff” you should read about the Audrain County, Missouri, obituaries database.
Not only the “about” section, but other sections on the page can be useful for extending your research and conducting better searches. There are links under “More help” that will point you to other aspects of using Ancestry.
The “More help” boxes provide more tips.
There is a page that explains ways to improve your search results (we will look at this in more detail in another post).
There is a page that explains how to use wildcards for searching.
Page explaining wildcards.
Also, on the search page for a given database, there is a section of “Related data collections.”
Be sure to READ STUFF! That’s tip number one. Reading this “stuff” can often provide you with answers, more clues, and new avenues to pursue.
We have had a little delay in the blog posts lately. Last week I was course coordinator for the “Spirit of the Inland Seas: Research in the Great Lakes” along with Cyndi Ingle (Cyndi’s List), Paula Stuart-Warren (Genealogy by Paula), and Judy Russell (The Legal Genealogist). It was a fantastic week with a great class! In that course, I taught eight lectures, and I also taught two lectures in Paula’s “Digging Deeper course.” As you can imagine, the weeks leading up to it and last week were quite busy with preparations and teaching! Therefore, a bit of lag on the blog. I will continue the current series next week.
Cyndi and I also opened registration for our next Mastering Genealogical Proof study groups that are beginning in August. Here are the details:
This will be a beginner/low-intermediate level class to study the book Mastering Genealogical Proof by Tom Jones. We will cover the principles outlined in the book as well as discuss the workbook questions.
Details of the course (PLEASE READ):
There will be THREE sessions: Wednesday daytime at 3pm Eastern, led by Cyndi Ingle (of Cyndi’s List), Wednesday evenings at 7pm Eastern led by Cari Taplin, or Saturdays at 1pm Eastern, led by Cyndi Ingle. Times are in Eastern so adjust for your time zone. Beginning Wednesday August 2, 2023 or Saturday August 5 (for 7 weeks). Each class will be about an hour.
We will meet on Zoom.
Cost for the course: $75
You will need to have the book, Mastering Genealogical Proof. It can be purchased on Amazon or through the National Genealogical Society if you don’t already have it.
There are questions in the book that we will use to guide discussion. Reading the chapter and answering the discussion questions will prepare you for each week’s class.
For the first half (or so) of each class session, we will present/recap the principles for that week (we’ll have slides).
The second half will be going over the discussion questions.
There will also be a private Facebook group for this class only so you can ask questions and discuss issues in-between class sessions.
Class size is limited to 25.
Sessions are NOT recorded. Please plan on attending in person.
Choose one of the following times, click the link to register:
We look forward to studying with you! However, if this session does not work for you, we will be holding the next session in early 2024. To be notified when registration opens for the next session, please click this link to sign up for the waitlist. (This waitlist is just a way for us to collect your email so we can notify you of registration and is not a guarantee of a seat in the class.)
Many, if not all, major genealogical websites have some sort of catalog that allows you to see their holdings. This allows you to drill down to specific databases for a given location or topic. Effective searching when working on a specific research problem will hinge on utilizing the catalog.
At Ancestry, from the home page, you’ll see some menu items along the top, to the right of the Ancestry logo. One of them is “Search.” When you click on that, a dropdown menu appears. Select “Card Catalog.”
You will then get a full list of every individual database at Ancestry. At the time of writing this post, the total is 33,274 collections.
In the image above, you can see some tools on the left. At the top are title and keyword search boxes. Below that are a series of filters. Usually, I type in a word or two in either the title or keyword box (sometimes I do each separately depending on what kind of results I get). For example, “Kentucky death.”
There are two items that come up with Kentucky death in the titles. You can also use the filters below to narrow down the database list. This is especially helpful if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for and you’d like to see what databases a website might have on a location or topic. Let’s say I want to see if there are any newspapers or obituary collections that might apply to Thomas Carroll Mitchell. Click on Newspapers & Periodicals, then Newspapers, then filter by location. In our case, we are looking for Missouri and Audrian County.
There are four databases from Audrain County (the neighboring county to Montgomery) that contain obituaries, one of them covering the year when Thomas C. Mitchell died in 1914. So, I will add this to my research plan. (Or, let’s be realistic, we’ll just jump in and search for Thomas.)
We will look at some more tips for using Ancestry’s catalog next time.
I know at the end of the last post I said I would next be talking about the Ancestry catalog. But as I started that, I felt like I needed to give a little background on why I’m even writing this series. I’ve probably talked about this before on this blog, but it is so important, that I’m going to say it again. Good research begins with a good research question. If you don’t know what you are looking for, how are you going to know when you find it?
I talked previously in this series about the two phases I’ve seen and experienced throughout my genealogical lifespan, collecting and then focused research.
The two genealogical phases.
Having a good research question guides your research in the second phase. It helps tell you where to look for answers.
There’s a Goldilocks effect when it comes to research questions. They can be too broad, too narrow, or just right. And we aim for the “just right” question. The question needs to identify a unique person in time and place, and it needs to be answerable. For example:
Who were the parents of Thomas Carroll Mitchell who died in Montgomery County, Missouri on 29 April 1914?
This question identifies a unique person by giving a full name and death date and location. It says “I’m talking about this specific Thomas Mitchell, not the man of the same name who lived two counties over and died a year later.”
A question too broad will not give those details: Who was Thomas Mitchell? Who were Thomas Mitchell’s parents? When was Thomas Mitchell born? All these only provide a name, and not a full name (use it if you have it), and not location or dates. There are far too many Thomas Mitchells in the world for these to be useful questions. They do not give enough information to even know where to start.
A question too specific might be: What was Thomas Carroll Mitchell’s exact date of birth? Believe it or not, some people did not know their exact birth dates, or records may not have been left that provide that information. A better question might ask for “when was he born” which can be answered with a date range or a year only.
The “just right” question will give enough information to guide our research. Let’s look at the example above. From that question, we know where and when Thomas died. Likely we have a document (death certificate or burial records) that provided that information. Now, we can work backwards to try to identify his parents. We know he died in 1914, so one step in our research plan might be to find him in all of the censuses starting with 1910 in Montgomery County, Missouri, provided he didn’t recently move there.
Based on what you find in the censuses, you then decide where to go from there. Part of that is what I call “pre-research.” How do you know where to go to find the records you want to look at? Guess what. It’s the catalog.
I’ll bet many of us (most of us?) go to a genealogical website and plug our ancestors’ names into the first search box we see and hope for the best. At least at first. In the past, this was exactly how I conducted my research. Rather haphazardly, with varying success.
In my experience, I think there are two phase in the life cycle of the genealogist (there may be three or more, but I haven’t gotten there yet). First, there is the collection phase. We’ve just gotten started, we know a few details from our parents or grandparents, and we just start collecting records and filling in the pedigree chart as fast as we can. In this phase we find the “low-hanging fruit” in terms of records. And that is fine, but eventually, you get to the second phase. In the second phase, you’ve run into some trouble. You’ve found some conflicting records or some brick walls and have some harder work ahead of you.
Ancestry’s Front Page Search Box – Arrow Points to Advanced Search Option
Each of the major genealogical websites has a front page with that ever-tempting search box in it. That is their way to get quick engagement with website users and potential subscribers. This blog series is going to assume that we are all subscribers. If you try to do some of the things I’ll discuss, it will likely ask you to subscribe to see the documents or the search results anyway. Just be aware. This is not meant to be a blog series that discusses only FREE websites or databases. FamilySearch is the only free site I’ll be discussing.
The main front page search box is going to be great for that collection phase, but not so great for the phase where you work on more difficult problems. This series is going to help you learn some other facets of these websites to make your searching more targeted and efficient. That front page search may also be a hindrance if you are working with common names or don’t have much information to help narrow down your search results. When working with general search results, we have to pay extra attention to details so we don’t end up “adopting” the wrong family into our family tree.
Hi loyal readers. You might have noticed I took a bit of a break from my blog. I just had so many things come up that something had to give for a while. But I’m back, so never fear, all is well and I’ll try to get back into my blogging routine.
First, what have I been up to? Well, the biggest event was that I was the keynote speaker for the Ohio Genealogical Society Conference that took place at the end of April. My keynote followed the theme of the conference “What Brought Them Here?” and focused on why families move and how might those who moved to the Great Lakes area have made their way there. I also gave a workshop on using Google’s MyMaps, as well as five other lectures. It was a busy week! And all of the time leading up to that event was when I took a blog break. I had to make sure all of my materials were ready!
Second, what am I up to for the rest of the year? The biggest thing going forward is that I’m coordinating a course and teaching in another for the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh. My course is “The Spirit of the Inland Seas: Research in the Great Lakes States” along with Cyndi Ingle, Paula Stuart-Warren, and Judy Russell. There are a few seats left if you’d like to join us! It is virtual so held entirely online and from the comfort of your own home. The other course I’m teaching in is “Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills” coordinated by Paula Stuart-Warren.
Third, what’s the next topic for the blog? I’m going to share some tips and techniques for using various online catalogs at websites many genealogists use frequently, starting with Ancestry, but we will eventually get to FamilySearch, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, and others. With this series I’m hoping to share some different ways to utilize the websites that you may not have thought of.
Genealogy Pants 