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Sunday, February 13th, 2011I like thinking about thinking. A few lines I wrote and then deleted in a report reminded me of some concepts that come up when thinking about proving a hypothesis. The sentences that I erased went something like this—”Though the year in her birth record is two years before the one claimed or implied by [...]
All the Angles
Sunday, January 30th, 2011So you’ve found some new genealogical evidence. Time to put it into your database and start the next hunt. Or is it? What if someone handed you a new and strange physical object and said, “Here. This is for you. I think you’ll need it.” You probably wouldn’t just make a note “Received interesting object” [...]
The Sagan Doctrine
Sunday, January 9th, 2011I ran across a quote recently that got me thinking about the extraordinary. In an episode of Cosmos Carl Sagan said, Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is a catchy phrase. I think it is fairly clear what that little statement is trying to get across, though it perhaps isn’t so precise. What is missing [...]
Painting the Past Read
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011Work I’ve been doing for some clients recently has got me thinking about a way that I sometimes do research when connections are hard to make. I think of this method as “painting ancestors.” I don’t mean portrait painting. I mean something more along the lines of house painting. These days painting woodwork with oil [...]
Holiday Interviews
Sunday, December 26th, 2010All the holidays at this time of year have gotten me thinking about interviewing relatives. Part of the art of interviewing relatives is to recognize when the flow of the interview is going in an good direction even if it isn’t where you planned for it to go. It may not be the information that [...]
Paleography and the “G-Word”
Sunday, December 5th, 2010Presumably everyone reading this has heard of the Renaissance—the great flowering of learning and investigation that followed the medieval period and went back to and improved upon Western Culture’s classical roots. Few know that this was at least the second try at a renaissance since the fall of Rome. The first try didn’t go quite [...]
Thinking Outside the Bricks
Sunday, November 21st, 2010I’ve seen some pretty impressive walls in my life. I admit I’ve never visited the Great Wall in China but I have seen Hadrian’s Wall. It was built during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian to separate Roman Britain to the south from the tribes living in what is now Scotland—short on the scale [...]
A Line to Draw the Time
Sunday, November 7th, 2010Timelines can be a great tool for genealogy. Timelines of general history give a quick overview and put events into their proper sequence. They can point out things in the sweep of history that may have influenced an ancestor. They can provide a quick-to-grasp framework for further understanding. Making your own timelines can crystallize thoughts [...]
Three Steps to a Better (Ancestral) Life
Sunday, October 17th, 2010Anything that isn’t sufficiently complex to look at from many different angles probably won’t hold a person’s attention for very long. There are certainly many ways to look at genealogy and the process of genealogical research. Genealogy, I’ve noticed, has been known to hold the attention of a researcher or two. One rather basic way [...]
You Never Know Who Is Hiding in those Details
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010Yesterday, I was looking at a roll of microfilm. All I was trying to do was locate a will and get a list of grandchildren that I thought I would find there. This will I knew would be buried in the minutes of town council meetings. Eventually, after stumbling upon a few useful tidbits in [...]
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