To Be or Not To Be - Was That My Question?

How many times have you sat down to do research and stared at the screen unsure of where to start?  How many times have you ended your research session in a totally different place than where you started?  Or, ended up finding information for an ancestor you weren't researching because you got off track?  These are all common issues that genealogists face every time they do research.  So, how can we stay on track?

Create a Plan

As someone new to genealogy, you may periodically find yourself spending hours jumping from website to website trying to find information about your ancestor.  We sometimes call this "falling down the rabbit hole".  While it's terrific to have so many record collections at our fingertips these days, it can also sometimes be a curse.  It's incredibly easy to get distracted by new interests or clues.  Before we even know we're doing it, we can switch gears and end up researching a totally different person or topic.  But, it order to make the best use of our research time, we should really stay focused on one person or topic.  At the same time, we don't want to lose track of those items that catch our attention during our research session even if they are not pertinent to our current subject of research.  After all, those clues could lead us to another piece of valuable information for our family tree.  So, just like for any other goal you want to achieve in life, the best way to achieve your genealogy goals is to create a plan.  Spending the time up front to plan out what you want to research will save you a ton of time when you actually sit down to do that research.  And, the first thing you'll need to do for your plan is define what you are trying to find.

What's Your Question?

While defining a research question sounds easy, you want to make sure your question is well thought out.  Imagine you are providing this question to someone who does not know you or your family at all.  Would they understand your question?  Would they have enough information in the question to be able to do the necessary research?  Is the question narrow enough so they don't waste time searching in the wrong places?

For example, I may start out with a question like "What was the date of my great-grandmother, Georgianna Raymond's, marriage?"  This may seem like a perfectly logical question, but if we needed to use only this question to begin our research, wouldn't we be missing some other useful information?  First of all, this question makes the assumption that Georgianna did in fact get married.  Secondly, I should consider adding any other information I know about Georgianna to make sure I'm researching the correct person in the correct location.  

So, maybe I could change my question to the following:  "If marriage occurred, when and where did Georgianna Raymond, who was born about Oct 1869 in Canada and died on 25 Nov 1942 in Baldwinsville, Onondaga County, New York, USA, marry George A Terrian, who was born about Jan 1862 in Canada and died on 8 Apr 1907 in Oswego, Oswego County, New York, USA?  George and Georgianna had their first son George J Terrian about Jan 1888."

I removed the fact that these are my great-grandparents as that information will not be relevant to a search for their marriage date.  I added both of their birth and death dates (or approximate dates) and locations to narrow the scope of my search.  I will likely want to search records in those two locations first and then if nothing is found, take a look at where they might have traveled in between.  I also added a sentence regarding when their first child was born as this also narrows the time frame during which I will search.  Given Georgianna's birth date, we can reasonably estimate that her marriage occurred sometime between 1884-1888 if they followed normal marriage conventions at the time.  This may not always be the case, so if records aren't found during this time frame I would expand the search parameters.

Following Through

Now that you have your research question, you can proceed with creating a plan of attack.  List out all the places where you might find information regarding this marriage.  I like to use a worksheet to create the list and add the URL links if it's a website I want to search.  In this particular case, I might even create a list for each location since record collections could be vastly different for US records vs. Canadian records.

Once you have a thorough listing of places you want to check, dive in, but check off each item on your list once you've searched it so you don't accidentally repeat the same search.  If you think of other sites or archives to search, just add them to the bottom of your list.  But, what about when you come across something interesting but unrelated, you ask?  For example, maybe I'm in a Canadian records collection that includes birth records as well as marriage and death records and I don't have a birth certificate or register for George Terrian yet.  I might be very tempted to search for that while I'm in this database, but it is not relevant to my current question.  In this case, I would create a separate worksheet of 'Interesting Items That I Want to Come Back To' and add some basic information about what I am interested in and why and I would add a link to the collection.  

The next thing is critical.  Once you record the information on your worksheet, go back to your original research question and re-read it.  It will help you stay on track and retain your focus.  Dive back into your research on that question and continue on until you find your answer.

More Questions Than Answers

You may be asking if you should only work on one question at a time.  That is a matter of preference, but personally, I would say yes and no.  For a single research session, I would recommend focusing on just one question so you don't end up bouncing around and losing a lot of time.  But, I also understand how frustrating it can be when you search and search and search and are not finding the information you want.  Sometimes, switching gears to another person or topic can be refreshing, so overall I think it's okay to have a few open questions available.  I try to keep between 3-5 open questions for research at any given time.  I don't recommend having more than that or it can get confusing and it becomes more difficult to decide which one to work on.

While this is my way of trying to stay focused, this may not be what works for you.  If you have another method, please feel free to share in the comments below.  We are all here to learn from each other so please join in the conversation.  Happy Researching!