Vacation included lots of time on the road. Along with trying to finish knitting a pair of socks, I took along this new book for when the fingers got tired. It turned out I did more reading than knitting. What a find! Marcia Hoffman Rising's The Family Tree Problem Solver: Proven Methods for Scaling the Inevitable Brick Wall has me rethinking some of the ways I have been doing things. She advises researching the families around your family in the census for hints as to female relatives or places of origin. ("Do you mean I have to research all those people too?" Sigh!)
She calls it the difference between searching and researching. She has tips for getting around missing "burned county" courthouse records (my case in Madison County, IN). Plenty of examples help illustrate her recommendations. Full disclosure, I have nothing to do with this book, I just learned a lot.
Now to finish those socks....
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Thank you for the mention, Mary. I have this book, too, and love it; it was one of the first genealogy books I bought. Suggestions of the type you cite an example for were one of the things that made genealogy seem even more enjoyable - it made it seem more like detective work to me.
ReplyDeleteI know, Greta. It makes me think I need to revisit all the archives and redo what I've done with a different perspective (sigh!)
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