I find myself in this scenario a lot - I go to a Registry of Deeds or Town Hall to do research. I have a research plan (i.e. a long to-do list) and I want to accomplish everything on my list. Often times the next step I take depends on reading the document in hand, making a quick analysis and then dashing off to find the next document. At the end of the day I pull together all my photocopies, photographs and/or scans along with notes and head off home.
Once I'm back in my office or the next day I start to really mentally process and take in the research I did on-site. Lingering questions and "what ifs" or "did it really say that" start creeping into my head. Before I know it I am pulling out the documents, reading them again, clarifying and hopefully answering the questions in my head.
How exactly was the name written on that will? Which children were named in the guardianship papers? Where is Otter Creek anyway (I bet it's critical to this mystery!)? Did I check the transfer date versus the recording date on the deed?
I find that I typically check relevant documents two or three times before I am completely satisfied that I understand what information they have to offer me. And some documents I revisit months or years later (you know, for those particularly sticky mysteries).
How many times do you read the documents that you collect as you do your research? Do you sit and thoroughly absorb them the first time around? Or do you need to revisit them as I do? I'll be very curious to hear your responses and learn your research habits!
That is an amazing difference. Thanks for the tip.
ReplyDeleteI revisit them often. You might have discovered other things elsewhere in the mean time that shed new light on or provide a different context for the information in that document.
ReplyDeleteGo back! Go back! Go back!
ReplyDeleteI tend to transcribe many of the handwritten documents. It causes me to look at each word and discover nuances I may a have missed...In the will, he calls each female "my daughter" except the eldest whom he calls by name and "wife of...". He never uses the words, "my daughter". Although she carries his surname and was always shown in his household, she was 5 years old at the time of the marriage....the absence of the words, "my daughter" could be very telling. I might have missed it without careful scrutiny. Transcribing helped.
I also missed two children in a household for several months because their surname changed. Had I not gone back, (and transcribed) I might have missed them forever!
Suzie - wonderful examples! That's exactly the kind of nuance re-reading will help find. But it still takes a sharp researcher behind the reading to see it! :)
ReplyDeleteI do a quick read on-site in case the record points to something else I need to check while I'm there. I don't really study records until I'm ready to update my database. I find transcribing some documents, especially wills, helps me to break down the information. I've found things during that process that I'd never noticed simply reading. Whenever I find additional info on a person, I usually review everything I already have to see that it all fits together or if new info gives a different perspective to something.
ReplyDeleteBefore I leave a courthouse, I take 20-30 minutes to review everything I found and to see if there are clues in the copies that might lead me to another document. I've learned it is time well spent and it is easier while the names, etc are still fresh in my mind and while I am where the documents are located. When I get home, I transcribe each document for my files and then abstract it for my "travel notebook." I continue to read and re-read these documents for clues. It is a never ending process.
ReplyDeleteIt depends on what I am researching and for whom, but most of the time I read through everything carefully at least once while in the repository of the day to make sure I have all the pages and pertinent related documents copied. Once I get them back to my office, I read through them several more times to glean all the information I can. Since many of my associated families and those of my husband are from the same counties, and much of my research for others too, a new addition to the collection may complete a totally unexpected puzzle in addition to the one I was working on at the time.
ReplyDeleteI agree with others...revisiting is critical, not just soon after (when the process is still clear) but later on when you may have learned additional background info...or just because you "see" something you missed first time around, including some other route to try. Also find transcription to be worth the time invested. Good series. Brenda, how wise to check before leaving. BTW does anyone else find critical info at the last minute, just before leaving the town where the archives are?
ReplyDeleteI do the initial review at site of key points and then do a full transcribe at home. Then do an evaluation of the document, ie why was it created, is there something that should be mentioned that isn't, what further questions does it raise etc?
ReplyDeleteI also like to revisit every so often as you do find out other information which make clarify something in the document.
I still have documents that I copied many many years ago, now and then I pull them out and look them over. I even compare the transcribed record to the original just to make sure it is correct. Sometimes as you learn more there are things that at one time meant little to you but now suddenly make sense or give you that AHA! moment.
ReplyDeleteI'm a re-reader and a transcriber - really helps to process the info. I also to save both the electronic version of the document with the transcription in a PDF to make it even easier to review later (and searchable online too!).
ReplyDeleteLauren Rogers Mahieu
genejourneys.com
I am definitely a re-reader. Those darn wills! I have some that are so intricate that I still randomly pull out the will and take excerpts from it to look at the information in a different way. I've had some of these wills for more than 10 years! And sometimes I cry when I find that the only surviving record of a document is an extraction of vital information. I just have to trust that they really got the critical information correct.
ReplyDeleteI find it invaluable to re-read all documents found in the archive, as my research progresses. Information that may not have appeared relevant at the beginning can later prove crucial. I recently re-read church charity records here in England and what was previously an anonymous list of benefactors, when coupled with other information I had subsequently unearthed, suddenly became pivotal to the history of the house I was researching.
ReplyDeleteI find it valuable to revisit documents. I can miss things in the initial excitement, as I found out when I looked again at a couple of letters I had transcribed. I wrote about it just this week
ReplyDeletehttp://pastsunfolding.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-did-that-really-say-revisiting.html
I generally scan documents while on site and then hopefully within a few days after I get back home, 'process' all the information and fully read everything. When I understand it all, I file it away. However, I still go back from time to time because as I uncover more information later, it often times adds light to those previously found documents. Also as my genealogy knowledge grows, I want to use that new found knowledge in hopes of uncovering new clues. I've been recently looking into photo dating and that has caused me to rethink who is in a photo that I thought I knew everyone in it. Documents are the same way.
ReplyDeleteI definitely go back hours, days, months or years later and have many time caught something I missed or wasn't really looking for the first time. I have been going over stuff a lot lately. Just last week I went back over some plot info from a cemetery and realized the husband surname was spelling differently but it was easy to miss. There is some question on what it was originally and how much it changed. Christine
ReplyDeleteWhen I first start really getting in to genealogy and looking at census records I thought that my maternal great grandmother worked as a housekeeper for the Privato Family only later as I did more research and then went back did I realize it said Private Family and that is what it usually said for domestic help. No wonder I couldn't find the family.
ReplyDeleteI revisit documents when it is necessary.
ReplyDelete