In the first post of my Family History for Beginners series, I talked about the EASIEST first step you can take in dipping your feet into the world of genealogy: filling out a pedigree chart. Your pedigree chart led to your very first research question. Now, we’re going to take that research question and plug it into a genealogy research plan so you can dive into the fun stuff: genealogy records. Here’s a bird’s eye view of what we’ll be covering:
What is a genealogy research plan?
Simply put, a genealogy research plan is an outline of your research process. You use it as a guide to keep you focused on what you want to discover and to help you document your journey in learning about your family history.
Why does the genealogy research plan get skipped?
It’s very rare to hear a beginner family historian say they started their research journey with a plan. More often than not, people get hooked with services like Ancestry that promise to help you trace your roots.
Ancestry is my absolute favorite service to use for research, but you need a lot of discipline when using its resources.
I still remember the first time I created my family tree on Ancestry — I had just added a few details about my parents and grandparents, and then oh! A little green leaf waved on the screen: the information I added to my tree generated a hint to a record, and the hint was correct!
So I assumed that all the hints were correct.
You see, the problem with Ancestry tree hints is that they turn you into an instant gratification junkie. It’s amazing how a few clicks on tree hints turns into HOURS of wasted time with no real results.
This resulted in two problems:
- I had a tree of people who weren’t actually related to the ancestors I already knew about
- I had records connected to my ancestors for completely different people with the same name.
It was a mess.
If I could go back to the beginning, I would ignore the tree hints from the start and map out a research plan, because putting a research plan together is what revealed the mess in the first place.
A real research plan forced me to go look for sources to the information I already knew about one of my ancestors. Upon further inspection, I realized I couldn’t really prove anything with the records I had attached to my family tree because names, dates, and relationships weren’t adding up.
One by one, my tree branches seemed to break.
Quick and Easy Genealogy Research Plan Template
Hopefully, you didn’t spiral in your family history research quite like I did. And if you did, then hey – let’s be genealogy work-out buddies and get in shape together!
Here’s how to put a plan together that’s simple, straight forward, and easy to jazz up when you become a pro.
Step 1: Name Your Ancestor
- Who are you researching? write it down!
- Make sure you provide the full name (no nicknames!)
- Researching a female ancestor? Use her maiden name!
Step 2: State Your Research Goal
After you fill out a pedigree chart, you’ll most likely have a few blanks on it. Look at the first piece of missing information – turn it into a question and now you have a research goal!
So, if are missing marriage information for your maternal grandmother’s parents, then your research question would be:
Determine the marriage date and location for John Jacob Doe and Jane Marie Dear
Step 3: List What You Already Know
Even if you’re completely new to researching your family history, you may still have SOME knowledge about the ancestor and where that information came from. Make a note of what you know so far about your ancestor. Your current knowledge could be from:
- a childhood memory (so you would be the source)
- a family member
- an obituary
- an old family bible.
Step 4: Make a Hypothesis
Look at what you know so far about your ancestor and maybe even their immediate family and make some educated guesses about the answer to your question. Sometimes, even the names we have or birth places that have been passed down from generation to generation are not accurate, but that’s ok. You’re going to test the hypothesis through your research to determine if what you know is, indeed, true.
Step 5: Brainstorm Potential Sources
Based off of what you know and your theory, list some sources that may be helpful. If you’re trying to find a marriage date and location, you may want to look for:
- wedding announcements in newspapers where your ancestors were living
- marriage bonds
- intention to marry records
- marriage applications and licenses
- divorce records
Step 6: Log your Findings
When you find a record, list it along with the source. There’s nothing worse than needing to look at a record again and you can’t remember WHERE you put it or where it came from.
Did you perform a specific search and it yielded nothing for your ancestor? Log that too. Just type “NIL” in your research plan which means “Not in Location.” This will help prevent you from conducting the same search again (I know this sounds impossible but it’s crazy how true it actually tuns out to be).
Recording dead end searches also helps to prevent the dreaded “tree hint” rabbit hole. You may find the same hints pop up every now and then. If you don’t remember the dead ends, you’ll find yourself chasing the same rabbit over and over again.
Use Notion to make your Genealogy Research Plan
Make it even easy on yourself and use Notion to type and store your research plans. I’ve been using Notion to organize my whole life, genealogy included. The best part is that it’s completely free for personal use! I’ve put together a simple genealogy research plan template for you to test drive in Notion.
Here’s how to use it:
Step 1: Set up your Notion workspace
Head to Notion.so to create your account and review the basics (it’s easy – I promise)
Step 2: Sign up to receive my template in your inbox
Step 3: Click “duplicate” in the top right corner of my template
This saves a copy for you in your own Notion account – you won’t be able to edit the template until you’ve duplicated it.
Conclusion
With this genealogy research plan under your belt, you should be well on your way to starting your first research project!
Let me know in the comments if there’s another feature you like to consider when planning your family history research. 🙂
