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Crafting a research plan part three: Identifying records of interest
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The first two steps necessary to craft an effective research plan have been discussed over the last few days:
The third and final step will yield your final research plan, which you can use to guide your research: identify records of interest.
It is vital, in applying the Genealogical Proof Standard to your research, to conduct a reasonably exhaustive search for all documents that may contain information relevant to your defined problem. In order to do this, you must first identify which documents might contain this relevant information. You will have gained knowledge of the various records created in your jurisdictions of interest that would help to solve your problem during the second step of this process. With this knowledge, you can visit the websites of various repositories to create a “reasonably exhaustive” list of the specific sources you will search.
We will use the example of a World War I soldier who was born in 1893 in Dorchester Co., Maryland, and died in 1965 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to demonstrate this process. You would like to identify his father.
First on the list to check would be the most direct answer to the question, that is, a birth certificate. However, in your investigation you learned that the state of Maryland did not begin registering births until 1898. Therefore there would be no birth certificate in existence.
Next, you will consider each repository one-by-one, beginning with those most accessible. You have a subscription to the U. S. Deluxe Collection on Ancestry.com, so you will create a list of those records available on the site. Federal census records for 1900 and 1910 would be most likely to show the soldier living in his father’s household. Images of these two records are available on Ancestry. Because his birth date would have made him eligible for the draft during 1917-1918, you will also check the World War I Draft Registration Cards available on Ancestry. These cards often name either the place of birth or the nearest relative, which might possibly be the young man’s father.
The death certificate may also identify his parents, so this should be obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Division of Vital Records, who holds death records from 1906 to the present. An obituary, possibly published in the Philadelphia Inquirer Public Ledger, may also provide additional details. The Inquirer Public Ledger was published from 1934 to 1969.
Depending on your research problem, you will want to explore the state archives website, to see what records they contain, and the Family History Library catalog, online at www.familysearch.org. For those records not available in local repositories, you can order them through the mail, or on microfilm through your local Family History Center.
Be sure that, as you add records to access to your list, you include at least the following information: name/description of the record, and repository where the record is held. This list will serve as a research plan, which you will keep with you as you conduct research. You will want to record on this plan other information, such s the date you searched the record group, and the results of your search. In this way, your research plan can also serve as a research log, so that you can accurately report the sources searched and the results of this research later as necessary.
Completing these three steps,
(1) Define your problem.
(2) Investigate the location
(3) Identify records of interest
before you research, will help you to make the most of your research time, an d help you produce professional-quality research all the time.
This article has been posted on November 8, in response to the NaBloPoMo challenge of posting one article every day throughout the month of November.
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