{"id":1915,"date":"2017-07-12T11:19:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T18:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2017-07-12T11:19:15","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T18:19:15","slug":"process-is-important-for-confidence-in-the-outcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/2017\/07\/12\/process-is-important-for-confidence-in-the-outcome\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cProcess is Important for Confidence in the Outcome\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have been listening to the confirmation hearing for Christopher Wray, the nominee for Director of the FBI, being held before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Wray said that \u201cprocess is important to confidence in the outcome. If there is something there, the process would have found it.\u201d The process provides direction and order.<\/p>\n<p>My belief is that most things apply to genealogy research and its need for authenticity and results. So let me re-state my genealogy position\u2014I use a genealogy research process, which to date has guaranteed an unusually high success rate. And an order of searching documents which supports that process:<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Marriage-Oriented Research Strategy: <\/strong>It will separate out for you more than one family or person by exactly the same name. Multiple people combined into the same person or family is the <em>most common <\/em>genealogy <em>problem&#8211;<\/em>in the past and today.<\/p>\n<p>Extract onto family group worksheets, <u>each marriage <\/u>for your surnames of interest.\u00a0Get them all out of the records at the <strong>county (or town)<\/strong> level, where they can be compared for fit and match.\u00a0You can do this manually on paper charts or digitally on charts included in your genealogy software.\u00a0<strong>Major rule:<\/strong>\u00a0 <strong>ONE<\/strong>\u2013<u>one family<\/u> per chart, <u>one source<\/u> per chart.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Search the <strong>marriages first<\/strong>.\u00a0Start tentative family units by extracting each marriage on a family group worksheet\u2013each marriage on its own family group. Sort by <u>census year <\/u>so each married couple can be located in the next census after the marriage and followed each census year. Watch for names of men who marry the daughters.<\/li>\n<li>Search census records or census substitutes <strong>second<\/strong>. Extract all the entries for your family surname from the\u00a0census records\u2013census decade by census decade&#8211;So you <strong>add to<\/strong> and <strong>build<\/strong> the family units <u>as you go<\/u>. Extract all the men who marry the daughters<\/li>\n<li><strong>Interim Analysis<\/strong>\u2013identify the <u>re-marriages<\/u>, especially for the women. Which families appear to move away? Which ones stay in that locality?\u00a0Look for \u201cGretna Green\u201d marriages\u2014where the couple runs away to be married or chooses a distinctive place for their marriage.\u00a0Spot middle names which are surnames.\u00a0Identify unusual given names\u2013Permelia, America, Mahala, Europa, Cinnamon, Trauma, and so on.\u00a0Watch for given names that are repeated in each family unit, each set of children regardless of gender, or each generation.\u00a0Watch for other families who marry into these family groups.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Set aside<\/strong> family units which clearly don\u2019t fit, for later consideration.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Plan follow-up searches<\/strong>\u2013in the marriage records for those re-marriages you spot.\u00a0In the probate records\u2013if the head of house is elderly, look for a will, inventory, or estate settlement. If the head of house is a farmer, look at the deeds\u2013what lands did he own or farm?\u00a0Where are the lands located? How did he acquire his lands?\u00a0If there are young males in the household, search the tax rolls. If there are males age 16-18 years old in 1820\u2013check the militia lists. And so on. You don&#8217;t have to wait until you have searched all the county records to do these searches. As you discover the evidence follow it up.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Search the rest of the county records<\/strong>\u2014probates, land and tax rolls, vital records. At any point in the process, consult local county and town Heritage Books\u2014historical treatments of families written by descendants of those families.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Search the cemetery records last. <\/strong>You need additional information on the connections your ancestor made during his life along with the names of the persons he knew and associated with to locate the proper entry in cemetery databases\u2014especially if your ancestor has a common name.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep a careful record of the sources you search:<\/strong> include a description of the source, whether or not the index is complete and accurate, which library or archive has the source, and what names you searched for.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This process is unusually thorough\u2014if a kinship connection or if a place of origin is mentioned this process will identify the evidence for you to follow-up. Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle <a href=\"http:\/\/arleneeakle.com\">http:\/\/arleneeakle.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>PS I use such tools as timelines, surname targets, pedigree charts, maps (always) within the process to keep track of who the players are and how they are related. I take the evidence apart, as it applies to each and every player. And I build the family and the pedigree as I go through the records\u2014I don\u2019t want to follow the wrong lineage.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been listening to the confirmation hearing for Christopher Wray, the nominee for Director of the FBI, being held before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Wray said that \u201cprocess is important to confidence in the outcome. If there is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/2017\/07\/12\/process-is-important-for-confidence-in-the-outcome\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1729,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,190,191,141],"class_list":["post-1915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-genealogy-evidence","tag-marriage-strategy","tag-research-process","tag-surnames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1729"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1916,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions\/1916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}