Cyndi Ingle, of the globe-famous website, www.CyndisList.com, was the speaker at my local gene society last Saturday. She shared four awesome presentations with our appreciative group of 125 of the members of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society.
One piece of advice I quickly scribbled down was something that can help all the folks planning to come to use the Family History Library in December on the annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour. I promise that if you will copy/paste/read this homily of Cyndi’s at least ten times, and then DO IT, you will have far more success with your research. Here tiz:
“If you think you have looked at everything and everywhere and have not yet found your answer or your ancestor, then you are not looking in the right place, at the right record. You have not done your homework to learn about the records created in that place and for that time…..how they were created, where they are kept today, how you can access them, etc. In other words, you have not done the genealogy of the records of that place.”
So what does Cyndi mean? What does she suggest we do? Think of a locality where you want to research, and a time period. Make a list of all potential, possible records that might/could/would be available to you for searching. Then do your homework to see which of those records exist and where you can access them. Are they in Ancestry? FamilySearch? Google books? MyHeritage? Are they only in the county? Official county records? Historical society? Genealogical society? Local museum?
Both the Ancestry’s Red Book and the Everton’s Genealogical Helper are available online and both give start dates for when records began to be kept in a given place.
Just like a saying I have on my wall, “I never said it would be easy; I just said it would be worth it.” (That quote is attributed to the 1920s actress Mae West.)