Start with What You Know

Everything I’ve ever read about starting genealogy research says the same thing: “Start with what you know.” So many people are determined to connect to someone famous, but you can’t do genealogy research that way. You might get lucky and make that connection, but most of us won’t.

You always start with yourself, and I’m no different. So, I’m starting with myself and my parents. My father is Nathan Grady Perkins, and my mother was a Sweat (she’s still living, so I’m respecting her privacy). I know their birthdays and where they were born. I also know their parents—though my father only has his mother, so his father’s line may never be discovered. That makes three grandparents.

Documenting My Findings

I start with my father and go on Ancestry.com, documenting all the hints for him. There are five or six hints, including the 1950 US Federal Census and a couple of obituaries. I enter everything into Microsoft OneNote, where I keep all of my research notes and files. I also enter each source into Evidentia3 for proof and analysis later.

Organizing and Preserving My Research

I can create PDF copies from OneNote, which takes care of my digital copies of sources and my father’s individual profile sheet. Since they’re saved as PDFs, I also print out a hard copy and file them in my binders.

Making Connections

One of the obituaries is for my grandmother, and it mentions her children and a sibling. I’m now able to connect my father to his mother and two siblings. I can add my grandmother and her brother to my list for future research.

The next significant find is the 1950 US Federal Census. This source verifies relationships between my father, his mother, two siblings, and also adds a set of grandparents.

I know I have the right family as I know my father’s siblings and I remember my great-grandparents. I’ve got hints for the six new people I’ve found just from two sources (although I documented all of them). The rest of the sources were mainly birth and death dates for my father, which only solidified the facts. I’ll use these later if needed for proof and analysis reports.

What’s Next?

Now that I’ve exhausted all the sources on Ancestry.com for my father and I’ve checked a couple of other sites, I have to make a choice: Do I continue with my grandmother, or do I research my own mother and proceed by generations?

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