ESSENTIAL SEARCH SKILLS TO MASTER
We frequently refer to certain documents as ‘family history sources’ but do we ever stop to think about what we actually mean when we use the phrase?
It’s not as if the documents that we use in our research come with a label attached to them saying ‘This is a family history source’!
So, what is it that we’re looking for? What makes something a good source for family historians?
What makes a good source? Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer but I think that our ‘wish list’ should include the following items:
• names
• dates
• places and...
• relationships
The key ‘family history sources’ (birth, marriage and death records, census returns, and wills) have all of these and more and it’s not hard to see why so much of our research time is spent looking at them. And the last item on our list is arguably the most important: relationships.
But in this month’s Family Tree Academy I want to consider the usefulness of a wide range of documents which (usually) lack this key element: records
