The Process of Genealogy Research

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Today we are talking about the research process from beginning to end when we are tackling a research problem or we are trying to solve the next generation.

[00:00:12]So this is a foundational process. This is kind of follows the genealological proof standards as set forth by the board for certification of genealogologist.

[00:00:21]This is a lesson I taught at the genealogy TV academy and it has been edited down a little bit for YouTube.

[00:00:28]This will give you a glimpse of what it's like inside the academy if you are not a member. It is an overview of the skills that you need to really kind of research your family history properly to prove your lineage. And uh so the whole thing, the whole package is inside the academy. But for you here on YouTube, if you are a Patreon member or a YouTube member at the appropriate level, there is a handout and that is available to those members. All right, let's learn some skills. Let's talk about the genealogical proof standards. Uh really the process of what we do as professionals so that you can do your family history properly. Let's jump in.

[00:01:14][music] So the process of research is this. It starts with a research question. We create a research plan. We do the research. We document our findings res resolving conflicts after that and then we come up with a conclusion. Okay. Now this is really what every professional goes through. Why am I showing you this?

[00:01:40]Because it really will help you as a hobbyist or a serious genealogologist some break down some of those brick walls. This is the process that we go through when we are working on our family histories and our client research because we actually have to document all this stuff. And so anyway, this this is the process from which we go through and we do have to write a conclusion and for you we we'll get into that each one of these sections here in just a moment.

[00:02:11]All right. So let's start with the research question. So I love Mark Low. I don't know if you any of you have ever seen Mark Low speak. He's one of my favorite speakers and he has this saying that he calls to mole and ponder. And so you may have multiple research questions in your family history. And so we're going to mole and ponder all of those possibilities, but really what we're going to do is you're going to think about prioritizing those. Okay? When you create a research question, you're going to think about who, what, where, and when to craft a research question. And then you're going to consider why it matters to you. This is my own little take on it, right? My take on it is why does it matter to you? Because it's going to help you prioritize the many research questions as you sit there and gaze at your family tree. You know, a lot of times people run around and they rake up the leaves and they just, you know, go from one branch to another and they just kind of meander around the tree. But the reality is you got into this for a reason. And usually there's that one or two burning questions that you want to know. So I would recommend that you write down the who, what, where, and when, and craft a research question. I even stick them on my monitor sometimes on a sticky note just to keep me focused. And so when uh you're doing that, you could write something really simple or you could write something really complex. But we're going to talk about really how to craft a good research question here in a moment. You know, when did John do die?

[00:03:47]You get the idea. Those are very simplistic research questions, but ve very valid and that may be all you need.

[00:03:53]But I like to take it one step further.

[00:03:55]I like to build a foundation from which our research question resides. And so when we do this, we can craft a better or more detailed research question. So my research question and this is a research question I have been working on for years and I'm still working on it is this. So this is the foundation part but it becomes part of the detailed research question and that is Henry Gustaf Gus Henley was born in January of 1862 as an illegitimate child of Rebecca M. Henley in Randolph County, North Carolina.

[00:04:31]Rebecca never told Gus who his father was or at least I don't think she did.

[00:04:35]Okay. Now, some of you have been watching me on the YouTube channel and have seen me talk about this this research question in several episodes, but it's a it's a good basis from which we want to try and figure out who was the father of Gus. Okay. So, that in itself, that entire the foundation piece and the research question becomes my research question. So if I were doing this as a professional in a professional report, that whole thing would be my research question. Okay. When we have a research question with a good foundation, it allows us to dig a little deeper and starts creating thought for us. So the who in this case, well, there are three of them. There's Gus, there's Rebecca, and the unknown father. The what is really the relationship between the father and Rebecca. Now, I know Rebecca never married. the relationship is what it is, but curiosity kind of tries to figure out, well, when did they get together in order to conceive Gus and the when is where that comes in, right? So Gus was born in January of 1862, but he was conceived in spring of 1861. So now we got to think, well, wait a minute. If the where is Randolph County, North Carolina, was Rebecca in Randolph County, or did she travel somewhere else? Because I'll tell you right now, the likely father of Gus, according to DNA results, the guy had moved to Iowa. So, did Rebecca go to Iowa or did he come to North Carolina or do I have it wrong in the DNA and it's somebody else? So, we have to question everything. But right now, we just have an open-ended research question from which we can build. So, let's move on with with a little bit of homework. This is totally optional. You can do what you want, but I would suggest that maybe I don't know, put it in the Facebook insiders group if you're part of the insiders group. Write one to three research questions. Use who, what, where, and when to craft your research question and why it matters to you. So, you can do this on your own. You don't have to post it. You can just do it whenever you want or not do it at all.

[00:06:42]But I would encourage you if you want to get organized, you want to get skilled at doing this research process starts with a research question. So we're going from the research question now to the research plan. So the research plan is this. We're going to think about what you're looking for first before we actually craft the research plan. So it could be things like census records, vital records, birth, marriage, and death records, right? Church records, directories, court records, including divorce records. By the way, divorce records is evidence of marriage. We could be talking about newspapers, military records, land deed records, wills and probate. This is just scratching the surface of what we could be looking for. Immigration and immigration and naturalization records.

[00:07:29]And if those for those who may be new to the uh genealogy and you don't know the difference between immigration and immigration, immigration is arriving, those who are arriving, and immigration are those who are leaving. Believe it or not, there are immigration records as well in some countries. So, for example, in Denmark, I know that I have found immigration records in Denmark for my ancestors who were leaving the country and coming to the United States because the law there was that they had to report to the police department that they were leaving and there was a record of that. So then you can trace from there the newspapers uh of the ships leaving and around that time and so on. Local histories and regional histories, manuscripts, maps, tax records, family histories, occupational records, school records.

[00:08:22]Again, I'm just scratching the surface.

[00:08:25]Where are you going to find these kind of records? might be in personal archives or records online platforms such as Ancestry Family Search Wiki, My Heritage Genie, State Archives, National Archives, County Courous, and I know I'm talking fast, that's why I gave you the slides, vital records, courthouse documents, ask your family, newspapers, right? We got several companies that have newspapers, right?

[00:08:55]newspapers.com, newspaper archive, genealogy bank, chronicling America, state archives, local libraries have newspapers and a lot of those at the state archives and local libraries have not been digitized yet. Manuscripts, family histories, and local histories you'll find at libraries and archives.

[00:09:09]You can look in Percy, Jtore, and WorldCat. So those are just again scratching the surface of places you can look. So now taking what we already know, the who, the when, and the where, at least, we can start to craft a research plan. And so our research plan might look something like this. Maybe we go look for census records in 1860 in Randolph County because we know that he was born in 1862 and likely conceived in 1861 in that same area. We would research the fan club in 1860.

[00:09:42]That's friends, associates, and neighbors. If you're brand new to genealogy, death records for Gus, death records for Rebecca, newspapers during that time, court records, including things like bastardy bonds. In North Carolina, there are bastardy bonds. Tax records. If Rebecca owned any land or anything taxable, she might be listed in tax records. Rebecca might have her father might have had a will. Close family from top to bottom, and by that I mean birth to death. Land records for Gus and Rebecca. 1870 to 1940 census records for Gus. That's during his lifetime and same 1830 to 1910 is the lifetime of Rebecca. Census, state census, was there state census? A lot of people forget about state census records. Now, a lot of times state census records were in off years in like say the 35 or 45 or whatever, but they didn't happen every year and they didn't happen in every state. So you just have to do some research to look for state census records, city directories. Now this family came from Quakers. So normally I would put church records here, but in this case it's Quaker records because this family originated as Quakers. So there may be some Quaker information and cemetery records, migration records, the list goes on. So now we have our research plan. Let's talk about the research briefly. So the research when we're we've got our plan and you know I I I say this all the time you know in scuba diving in in in in pilots have the same saying the scuba divers will say plan your dive and dive your plan and airline pilots will say plan your flight and fly your plan. Here I'm saying plan your research and research your plan. We h at this point we just have a research plan. We haven't done anything yet as far as going and looking for the records, but by sitting down and doing a little brainstorming about that research plan now allows us to do some targeted focused research.

[00:11:43]All right? So once you go through and you work that plan, the question becomes, have you found everything?

[00:11:53]And I'm going to remind you to get outside the box. Get outside of ancestry. 97% of you said you were on Ancestry as your primary primary source.

[00:12:02]So if you're only looking on Ancestry, I invite you to consider looking at researching on Family Search at least.

[00:12:10]Maybe Wiki Tree. Those two are free. Go to My Heritage and do some digging over there. You know, you can do free options at all of those just to see what they have. Okay. So then we're going to document what we found. This is where we go. Okay, we have now gone through the research process and we are going to document what we find. And my question is, is this you? Are you a sticky note person?

[00:12:40]So, uh I know that a lot of people use old sticky notes to you know, okay, got to look here, got to look there, and they work through the sticky notes. My suggestion is as you find things that you put them in research notes. Now, I've talked about research notes a lot both on the YouTube channel and here in the academy, and I can't tell you how important research notes are, and this is just a quick little screenshot from uh Gus Henley's research notes. And quite honestly, you can't see it all because there's so many pages of it. But really, it's not like you have to go and write this book about this person. Just every time you find a record, you abstract a little paragraph about it and you put source information. So, for example, here I made a little comment about in and by the way, the research notes start with a date, then the item, and then the details. So, each little paragraph is different, but here we start with the date. He departed Liverpool for New York aboard the steam ship Nevada. And then I've got a reference note that references down here where that information came from. I do footnotes in my research notes. Whether they're proper or not is up to you. You know, if it's just, you know, a couple little tidbits or whatever in research notes. The reason why I do that in footnotes is because it's easy to read.

[00:14:03]When I'm actually in research mode, I'm focused. I'm laser focused on what it is I'm trying to do and I don't really want to sit there and look at all of the source detail because I've already done that. But at least I have it so that when I come back here 10 years later, I'm going where did I how on earth do I know that he boarded, you know, a ship called the Nevada in Liverpool headed for New York? When and where did I get that information? Well, I have it in the source information. This particular source is a I write all my because I this is just me because I geek out on source citations but uh I have written a professionally written source citation here. This one because it originated in Danish I translate it. So you put the translation in brackets so that someone else who is reading this 200 years from now can see the actual English translation. Right? And so then you move on to the next paragraph. And the cool part about research notes is it's a living breathing document. I do not upload to Ancestry or any place else my research documents because those research notes are constantly changing and I'm constantly working on them. And so every time I find a record, I add a note. Now, this second one here is a little unusual for me. I don't normally do it this way. here. This first two lines is really the note.

[00:15:30]This I wanted to go ahead and paste in the original data because it was so big.

[00:15:36]I didn't want to bog up the bottom of the footnotes. And then I created a professional written source citation.

[00:15:44]And then on another page, I just, you know, just as another example, I put 1885. Here's a map of Laram, Wyoming with a hyperlink. You can see that I can actually click on that right now and I can pull in the map which is kind of cool, right? So, I'm just going to close that out. But you get the idea. That's kind of neat that you can put, you know, some links in there as to where you find these documents. Now, I don't like to put full source, you know, hyperlinks and that's it because hyperlinks break.

[00:16:17]So, I do if I'm going to hyperlink something, I'm going to put what what it is, where I found it, and that kind of stuff in the source citation. So, this is actually page two. This is not a this is not a footnote. This is an actual entry in in page two. Okay? All right.

[00:16:35]So, the research process then moves on.

[00:16:39]So, we've found stuff, right? We've done our our plan. We've worked it. We've researched it. We've documented some of our findings in our research notes and then we're going to resolve conflicts.

[00:16:51]Now, I know I'm going to guess that 100% of you have found conflicts in your in your tree at one point or another.

[00:16:58]Either the names change, dates aren't lining up right, you know, and so on.

[00:17:04]And so, we're going to go about learning how to resolve those conflicts. So, again, this takes us back to Mark Low's mull and ponder, right? We're going to compare records. We're going to take a look at those dates that don't match, the names that differ, the locations that aren't lining up, the children and the spouses maybe don't line up correctly.

[00:17:27]And so maybe with the spouse, we've got a Mary in one record and a Beth in another record. So what is her name? Or does he have two different spouses? And so we've got to resolve these conflicts.

[00:17:39]And that is the next step in the process is to resolve the conflict. So, how do we do that? Well, we do that by comparing evidence. And we compare that against all of the records that we found. You can do this like in an Excel spreadsheet or whatever way of comparison that works for you where you can line up dates and names and records and however that works for you. I do it in Excel spreadsheets most of the time.

[00:18:04]And then we're going to also compare those just the conflicting data right across all the family and the fan club again friends associates and neighbors especially the close family depending on what the conflict is. Okay. Then we're going to weigh that evidence. We're going to say, okay, what piece of evidence has more weight when we're considering, okay, we have a a birth date from one place and a and a birth date from another place, but they don't jive. They're not the same. How do we weigh which piece of evidence has greater weight? Is there multiple pieces of evidence that have different dates?

[00:18:46]And so, that's part of the process of our evaluation.

[00:18:52]as I'd like to say, what has more street cred? Right? So, we did in the last couple of months, several of the uh sessions were about comparing census records, comparing other records and evidence evaluation. And so, all of that is found on the academy dashboard. And so, I highly recommend if you have not seen these sessions to please do so because it's part of the overall process. There are three different meetings that we've had where we've talked about correlating census records, correlating evidence, which was basically everything else that wasn't census records, kind of part two from the first one, and evidence analysis.

[00:19:36]So, we've talked about this in the past, so we're not going to get too deep into it right now, but that is kind of where we're at. We're resolving those conflicts. So, what has more credibility? This is a quiz for you now.

[00:19:49]You guys get to play in the in the chat box. And so, what has more credibility when evaluating records? In general, does a birth certificate or a death certificate have more credibility? So, you can just like type a B or a D in the chat window if you want to play along.

[00:20:07]All right, I see a lot of B's going in there.

[00:20:10]>> That's good. I'll give you the answer now. The answer is a birth certificate.

[00:20:14]Most of you got that correct. And the reason why is because a birth certificate is closer and is and is created by and is the informant is usually the mother of the child, the person who was actually there at the birth. And so a lot of times that birth certificate is going to be the most accurate. Okay. A death certificate on the other hand is often the death date might be firsthand knowledge but everything else is going to be secondhand knowledge. So, it's usually a distraught family member, a spouse, a child who is the informant and is giving that information to often a a third party who is like at the funeral home who then takes that information and sends it to the county. So it could be that in all of that either distraught, couldn't remember the information correctly or was guessing at when a person was born or whatever and so they don't have firsthand knowledge. So typically in that question the the answer would be a birth certificate in general. Doesn't mean the stuff on the death certificate is wrong. I'm just saying that typically a birth certificate is going to give us more weight when we're evaluating um information in general. Okay, next question. A marriage certificate or a marriage registry? So, you can put MC or MR in the chat window if you want to play along. Which has more credibility, a marriage certificate or a marriage registry? Oh, I'm getting mixed responses here. All right. Oh, we got a lot of marriage registries in here. All right. So, I'm going to give you the answer now. Thank you for playing along.

[00:22:04]We got a lot of mixed responses here. In my opinion, a marriage certificate is going to have more weight than a marriage registry. A marriage registry is often a copy of the marriage certificate. Therefore, it is a derivative copy. The marriage certificate is often the informant is the bride and groom. they're giving the information in the marriage certificate and so they would have firsthand knowledge a lot of times. Now again marriage registries could be absolutely accurate and there could be mistakes on a marriage certificate but in general I would say a marriage certificate would be the correct answer there. All right, here's another one. A will or an obituary. So W or O in the chat window if you want to play along.

[00:22:49]So, I'm seeing some W's going in there.

[00:22:52]I love these games. It's so much fun.

[00:22:55]Everyone so far that I've seen has put a W in there. And you are correct. A will is often signed by the actual person.

[00:23:05]I, Connie Knox, leave to my daughter everything, right? [laughter] I And I sign it at the end, right? So, yeah. So, a will is going to be firsthand document. It's also going to be a legal document. And it's also going to be, you know, a court document. So people are going to be working to really make sure that that is absolutely right.

[00:23:25]An obituary is usually created by a family member that is maybe writes the original or dictates the original to either a funeral director or to a newspaper. And so therefore, a reporter of some sort is creating the obituary and has the potential for being inaccurate. So, when we're weighing those two types of documents, that's that's where we're at. All right.

[00:23:52]Newspaper article or a court document.

[00:23:55]So, NA or CD?

[00:23:58]NA or CD? Yeah, I I I don't I'm almost embarrassed to have asked this question because you guys are all killing it here. Of course, a court document is going to be more accurate. A court document has uh again the legality behind it. people are going to really be paying attention to make sure that it's accurate. Newspaper article again is a third-party reporter who has is pushing a deadline and has got to get this article out really quick. All right, so here's one for you. An ancestor was born in 1898. Which has more credibility for his age? Now, we're asking a specific fact in an ancestor's profile for his age. Is the 1900 census or the 1940 census going to have more credibility?

[00:24:44]And I'm seeing a lot of 1900s, a few 1940s in the in the chat, but a bing.

[00:24:50]All right, beautiful. Thank you for playing along. That was the last question, by the way. In case you're wondering, the 1900 census is going to have more credibility because it is closer to the birth of the child. So, and the informant is could be the same.

[00:25:07]It could be the mother in both cases, but more than likely the child who was born in 1898 is only two years old in 1900. And so that informant is going to be someone in the household most likely with the child and is going to really know because they were only born a couple years ago. Whereas the 1940 census is a long time after the fact.

[00:25:32]And it could be that the informant, we don't know who the informant is maybe.

[00:25:36]And we're going to assume that the informant is by then or the person that was born in 1898 is an adult and is living in 1940. And who knows who the informant is and that person may or may not remember the birth date accurately.

[00:25:53]So it could be a 16-year-old child who is giving the information to the census taker and going, "Well, I think dad was born, let's see, I think he's 45. I don't remember." You know, so you just get keep that in mind. Whatever document, especially census records is closer to the event that you are looking for is more likely to be more accurate.

[00:26:16]Now, clearly [snorts] the 1940 census is probably going to have a lot more information on it, but still, and it doesn't mean it's going to be wrong.

[00:26:23]Again, all of these documents, well, we're weighing them. We're hopefully weighing multiple documents, but hopefully that gave you a little sense of how we're kind of weighing our documents when we're trying to resolve our conflicts. Okay, so the last part of this is to write your conclusions. Why do we do this? Well, we've gone through the research question, the plan, the research, and documenting our finding and resolving conflicts. And then we come to this point where we're going, "Okay, we need to document this." And I do this in my research notes. And the reason I do this is because 200 years from now, somebody's reading this document and they're going, "Well, how did she come up with that? I want to have a little paragraph in there going, based on this evidence, I came up with this conclusion about this fact." Okay? So, it could be a a simple or a complex, however you want to do it, uh, resolution of your conflict.

[00:27:20]Okay? And so you're going to outline what the problem was originally, and that's just basically restating the research question.

[00:27:30]Then you're going to outline the findings, and you're only going to you're going to have found a bunch of stuff, but you're only going to list the evidence that is relevant specifically to the research question when you're writing this conclusion and your reason for your conclusion.

[00:27:49]Okay? So, do you need to do this in every after every research question or through every process? Not necessarily.

[00:27:57]But a lot of times it helps it also help if you're thinking about crafting a research story or I mean a family history book or or anything that you're doing. You can actually write your story, right? You can tease the audience with, well, where did Uncle George come from when he landed in New York, right?

[00:28:21]You can and then go through, well, based on these records, blah blah blah blah blah, this is what I found. Therefore, he came from Ireland. So, I mean, it can be that simple. You can share these stories either in books or just leave them in your research notes. You can put them on Ancestry or wherever, whatever rocks your world. You could even do little Facebook groups and Facebook stories, that kind of stuff. But whatever you do, please keep them on your computer and or in the cloud or on Ancestry. But I like to have them in my research notes because I have control over my research notes and I know that if Facebook should die tomorrow, those stories aren't lost. And so, make sure you add them to your research notes.

[00:29:09]All right. So with all of that process, will you solve every mystery?

[00:29:16]That kind of depends on where the evidence leads you. Was there enough evidence to create a sound conclusion?

[00:29:24]So a lot of times when we're doing this and especially if you're, you know, getting way back there in time, you're back in the 16 or 1500s, you're going to run out of the paper trail eventually.

[00:29:36]So, you know, are you going to be able to solve everything?

[00:29:41]Not always, but a lot of times for most of your research questions, yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:48]So, these are kind of the like the foundation of of what we do all the time when we're really digging in. Do you go through this process with every ancestor? I don't, but I do it on the ones I'm really focused on. Absolutely.

[00:30:02]the ones that I have problems with, the brick wall issues, the ones that I'm just curious about. And honestly, it doesn't take that long to write a research question. You know, can take you a minute or two. It really doesn't take that long. Then you can create a research plan, which, you know, sit down with a cup of coffee and and scratch down a bunch of ideas.

[00:30:24]And then if you still haven't got enough ideas, go to like Family Search, go to the wiki, drill into the location, and on the right hand side, there's a whole list of it'll say newspapers and court records and probate and all this stuff.

[00:30:40]It's got a quick and dirty list for you that you can go, "Oh, yeah. Let me think about that, too." And you can go through and brainstorm a list of questions. Then go do the research. Again, plan your research and research your plan.

[00:30:54]Document your findings. Resolve those conflicts. Now, let me say one thing about resolving conflicts. You don't have to resolve every little conflict.

[00:31:04]You know, Henley is my maiden name. Hen Ly. I found it. Hen Ly. I found it. H nele.

[00:31:14]I don't care. That's not a conflict I'm worried about. That's not something I'm gonna have to go feel like I need to go write a whole conclusion as to why the name is what it is. You know, a lot of times with the spelling of names, people wrote what they heard because there was not a big deal about spelling of names.

[00:31:37]Some people Americanized their names after they settled in into the United States. So, you know, it just kind of depends. I might be a little more picky about trying to resolve conflicts when I have was he born in 1898 or 1905.

[00:31:54]There's a big spread there. Let's figure that out. But, you know, some people, my grandfather being one, he ran away from home when he was 16, he didn't know how old he was. He didn't know when he was born. He didn't have any of that information. When he turned 65 and tried to get a social security card, that was a problem because he couldn't prove his age. So you know those kind of conflicts then might be a little bit more important and then then we write that conclusion and honestly writing the conclusion is is is not only for the future generations but it's for yourself. You know why you did it? Why you came to that conclusion? Could it be wrong? If it if if it could be wrong state so put that in your conclusion.

[00:32:41]Use the language of probabilities. He was likely born in 1998 based on this evidence.

[00:32:49]So it doesn't mean that you have to say for sure he was born in 1998.

[00:32:56]But based on this evidence and this evidence and this evidence, it appears he was likely born in 1998. You can likely, you know, probably those kind of language language of probabilities you could use in your conclusion. All right.

[00:33:11]Well, we went through a lot. We went through the process, but we didn't dig into each individual thing like how to resolve conflicts and record evaluation and how to write research notes. All of that stuff uh is in the academy. If you want to join the academy, I can give you a discount right now. Uh use the coupon code GTVA 25 and the percent symbol will get you 25% off for the lifetime of your membership. So, uh, if you want to check that out, you can click on the QR code or you can, uh, go to genealogytv.org.

[00:33:47]All right, we'll see you in the next