In the last blog post, we looked at the general family information we found in Samuel C. Dimick’s biographical sketch. Now let’s discuss all of the minutiae and details that we (and by ‘we’ I mean I) might gloss over the first (or second, or tenth) time we read a biographical sketch.
When I began researching Samuel, I didn’t know anything about him, of course, so the details that were important to me at that time were the main biographical points we looked at in the last post. However, as time moved on, I gained more experience, and I wanted to know more specific information about him and his family, I started focusing on some of that minutiae. Sometimes we just aren’t ready to absorb information from a source. And that’s ok, as long as at some point in your process (this could be many years later), you go back and review your previous research.
After really digging into the details, I was able to compile a list of other sources I needed to examine to verify those details and get more information:
- Census Records
- Newspapers
- Obituaries
- Land Records
- Land Ownership Maps
- Vital Records
- City Directories
- School Records
- Agricultural Census
- Indian Reservation Records
- Revolutionary War Records
- Expand search to other states mentioned in the sketch: New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Minnesota
Over the next several posts, we are going to look at some of these in detail. I won’t go over each and every one, because, well, that could get boring. But, there are some highlights I want to hit that really opened some new research avenues and helped me understand Samuel’s life better and in more detail.
Genealogy Pants 