What do you wish you knew when you first started out? Or what piece of advice would you give yourself if you were new to family history/genealogy - family history is generally more geared to the hobbyist (who is encouraged to use genealogical standards and methods, but not required to do so), while genealogy is the more academic, scientific methods-based pursuit of data. Your journey into the past can, of course, be both - the best of all worlds!
My advice would be to do your history and geography lesson first. Find a county formation map series for the areas you research. Why? I started this journey in earnest in the early 1990s when my Aunt Pat shared my Grandpa's Bible with me. Some of the names were so beautiful and they belonged to people I had never met but peppered Daddy's and Aunt Pat's stories. I had always been interested and dabbled in family history, but now I was hooked.
I began hunting for Thomas Jefferson Wood, my great grandfather, in Nevada County, Arkansas (pronounced nuh-vay-duh, not neh-vaa-duh) where the Bible said he and more than half of Grandpa's 20 siblings were born. I searched for many long years. I could find him and wife Janie with their kids in the 1880 census on. They married in 1871 and all the names were right so I knew it was the right family. The Internet was new, so the inquiry boards were new and active but did not yet have lots of information, although they would explode upon the scene soon. I discovered the forums on Ancestry and Genealogy.com. Both were inexpensive then but growing. Then I discovered USGenWeb and it changed my research life.
I was exploring the ARGenWeb (Arkansas is AR) site and discovered the county formation chart there. I discovered my great grandfather was not born in Nevada but in Ouachita County. Nevada County was formed partially from Ouachita County in 1871. Thomas Jefferson Wood lived in the same place, the county lines and names simply changed around him. Once I knew that it took one afternoon at the Tulsa Public Library Genealogy Branch viewing microfilm to find who my 2X great grandparents were and have copies of the records naming Thomas's siblings. It was an amazing day, but I wasted so many years looking in the wrong records, growing ever more frustrated.
From this point on, I have always done the geography and some local history first. It has saved countless hours of research and frustration.
My advice would be to do your history and geography lesson first. Find a county formation map series for the areas you research. Why? I started this journey in earnest in the early 1990s when my Aunt Pat shared my Grandpa's Bible with me. Some of the names were so beautiful and they belonged to people I had never met but peppered Daddy's and Aunt Pat's stories. I had always been interested and dabbled in family history, but now I was hooked.
I began hunting for Thomas Jefferson Wood, my great grandfather, in Nevada County, Arkansas (pronounced nuh-vay-duh, not neh-vaa-duh) where the Bible said he and more than half of Grandpa's 20 siblings were born. I searched for many long years. I could find him and wife Janie with their kids in the 1880 census on. They married in 1871 and all the names were right so I knew it was the right family. The Internet was new, so the inquiry boards were new and active but did not yet have lots of information, although they would explode upon the scene soon. I discovered the forums on Ancestry and Genealogy.com. Both were inexpensive then but growing. Then I discovered USGenWeb and it changed my research life.
I was exploring the ARGenWeb (Arkansas is AR) site and discovered the county formation chart there. I discovered my great grandfather was not born in Nevada but in Ouachita County. Nevada County was formed partially from Ouachita County in 1871. Thomas Jefferson Wood lived in the same place, the county lines and names simply changed around him. Once I knew that it took one afternoon at the Tulsa Public Library Genealogy Branch viewing microfilm to find who my 2X great grandparents were and have copies of the records naming Thomas's siblings. It was an amazing day, but I wasted so many years looking in the wrong records, growing ever more frustrated.
From this point on, I have always done the geography and some local history first. It has saved countless hours of research and frustration.
