Genealogy Research Plans! You really need to be using them if you want
to tackle a genealogy brick wall. Genealogy Research Plans are
very much like road maps. You wouldn't want to move from
Houston to New Mexico without a map to get you
there because you might get lost in the desert.
Genealogy Research Plans are also a fantastic way
to keep you efficient, it's like a to-do list where
you can check up items that you know will bring you one
step closer to the potential answer to your
Genealogy Brick Wall and if you ever get lost along the way
you just look at your research plan see what the next to-do list item is and
keep going. Now seriously y'all how many of you
research with a Genealogy research plan I know I typically reserve them for my
most difficult research projects and problems those brick
walls that I just want to pull my hair out with.
But are you using them every time you research?
Or are you like me and use them when you're tackling tough
difficult questions. So before I get into the theory and then the application
of a Genealogy Research Plan let me welcome you to the channel
especially if you are a first-timer my name is Devon Noel Lee
and we help you understand your DNA, so you can climb your
family tree, and ultimately write your ancestor stories along
the way. Be sure to pick up the free guide
for tips and tricks for how to bust through your brick wall,
you'll find a link to that guide in the description below. But
what exactly is a Genealogy Research Plan? Now my friend and colleague Lisa
Liaison she not only is a fabulous educator, but she
also has a resource guide that you'll want to
check out that'll be mentioned in the show notes,
but she said that a genealogy research plan helps you
stay focused, stay organized, be efficient, and manage your clues. So
what goes in that genealogy research plan?
Well you need to articulate what your specific
goal is. Now later in the application process we'll tell you
that my goal is to find out who the parents of John Townley is,
but maybe your goal is really really really broad.
It helps in a genealogy research plan if you will break it down
and be specific, if you're specific you can actually get to your goal. The
next thing you need to do is review what you knew before.
Now in the previous video in this series I talked about how important it is to
review what you know, so this in your research
plan you will write out what you know, what is
your starting point, what information have you gathered, and
where did you gather it from? Because then you go and find
based on your goal and the research you've already done
what records what sources may have the answer to the question that
you are trying to solve then you can also put a working
hypothesis. Now this is optional, sometimes you don't have a
working hypothesis so you can't put it in your research plan,
but if you ever do develop a hypothesis and you do want to put it in your
research plan so that you don't forget it.
If you have a hypothesis go ahead and include it, but don't feel like that you
have to develop a hypothesis until you have enough reference material
to make one. Now this one some people like to
include they like to articulate what records they're going to search and
why they're going to search it and basically develop their whole
whole research strategy. I find this to be
a wasted step I like to go ahead and develop
what I want to look go and look for it and if i need to explain
why I looked into it why I looked there, i'll do that in my note-taking phase
rather than at the onset, but other people do
actually find it valuable to articulate their strategy what are they going to
look at first what they are going to look at second
and you can go ahead and put that there. So it's an option, but it's not required.
I highly recommend that you have a Digital
Research Plan. I like to make a Digital Research Plan
because then it becomes my research report I am
all about efficiency I don't want to do extra stuff when I can do things in one
spot and get things done faster. Now if you
want more tips and tricks on the value of a research plan and how to use them
effectively. Then I invite you to check out the
the blog post that I have based on an interview I did with Elise Scalise
Powell who is from the Genealogy Research Institute
of Pittsburgh, you'll be able to find the show notes in the description
box. Now I want you to make a research plan I advise you to go
digital, but some of you are going to want to still go
paper and that's fine Lisa Liason has a planner like I keep mentioning and I'm
recommending it because I want you to have fabulous resources
there are also some forms that you can gather online here's. An example from the
Golden Genealogist and you'll be able to find a
link to that in the handouts you can also use Trello to organize your
information. Lisa Liason has a blog post on how to
use Trello to use it for your genealogy research
planning you can check out that blog using the
show notes and then another colleague of mine uses
Evernote to do her Genealogy Research Planning and she
has some templates that you can access you can find all of that information in
the show notes of this video. I'm very much a fan of using google docs
I think Lisa Louise Cook of Genealogy Gems would
be proud of me because she is a google genealogist and I use google
docs because I can keep everything in one place.
And since I am a mobile genealogist I can use docs on my phone,
I can use it on my computer, I can access it on multiple computers, it's just in
the cloud ready to go. And again it can go from being my
research plan into my research report and keep track
of all of my notes along the way. Now I don't put a research log
in my plan there are other researchers who
create a separate research log, a research plan, a research report,
have a database, and all these extra things and I find that that is extremely
inefficient. So if you've watched this video you know that I am not a fan of
research logs, instead I am either a report/
plan report to a database or a database to a report plan. So check out that video
if you haven't watched it. Breaking through a brick wall can be
super-duper challenging. So if you ever start pulling your hair
out a little too much and you want to get some professional advice
and assistance be sure you check out my friends Legacy Tree
Genealogists. We featured them a number of times
on this channel so check them out they are my buddies and tell them Devon
Noel Lee sent you. So now let me tell you how I developed
my research plan and I'll even show you an example of it
as we go along. The first thing I had to realize is how
far back can we reliably research and we actually
talked about this in one of our live streams with Andy
talking about how far back can we reliably research.
Now John Townley was born in 1801 in what I believe is new jersey and he
died in cincinnati in 1890. He is in that window of reliable records
that we could research because it's in the United States so the
next is to try to figure out what records I'm missing.
For the purposes of this video I went way back into my research process
and I started with basically the information I
inherited on paper trees and I put it into a database
and then i've also searched three census records
as I searched those census records I put that information in my tree and that's
where I started. So what records am I missing and how am
I going to figure it out? Well that's when I turn to a
genealogist's secret weapon and that is the family search wiki I can
go to cincinnati i can go to hamilton county
and i can go to ohio to figure out what records were available at the time
that john townley lived to try to figure out what record
collections i need to explore but notice i only focused on cincinnati
i can do the same thing for new jersey but right now
i don't know where he was born i know he was from
new jersey and even though new jersey is smaller than texas it's still
a very big place when you're trying to find an ancestor
in the early 1800s so i'm going to hold off on going to the wiki
the family search wiki until i have more information so now i'm going to go and
start doing my research plan so we're going to
be on google drive and we're going to start
showing you how i have my research so in the header i have
the information that's going to appear on every page
so as i add more information let's do just a for instance
notice that that header is going to be the same john chandley here's his age
the location and my research question so in google docs to get to your header
you have to do insert header and then add your
information and then if you want to go back into it
you have to double click to make it work put a little question mark right there
now um the next part is to put a stat background information so
established facts or previously found research
now this is where i can add the information i found
about john so i've updated my research plan and i have the background
information and this is not my research report so i
can totally put everything in note form i
can put bullet points and then do all my little information
later now let's say i wanted to add a source
citation so i could simply click on where i need
a source to go and i can do insert and in this case i'm
going to do a footnote and then i can do 1850 citation
now i would actually put an actual typation for
the purpose of this video i'm just kind of demonstrating where that goes so then
it's right there um if i need to find one where i go
oh wait i forgot to add that source citation
then i can highlight it and do a little comment
by hitting this little comment icon right there i'd comment
and say find source you could probably put you a little more
on no just kidding be nice to yourself but that's how you can use your research
plan you can keep track of your sources you can keep track of your to-do list
and then you can keep going my primary goal is who is the parents of
john townley but often we have to work forward in
time like the more recent to go backwards so
i really need to esta um evaluate and validate the
information i need to validate these children record
now i'm descended from john's family so i'm gonna go ahead and bolt him maybe
even give him a little like background color that
so this is the gentleman i'm descended from and
i still need to validate the siblings because again this information came off
of a group sheet i need to validate these death and the
birthplace and then i need to find out more about
his life in cincinnati maybe some potential kin that is living
in cincinnati that anything that can get me back to a
specific place in new jersey and once i can get to new
jersey then i can tackle who who are his parents
but the clues can be found along the way so let me show you some of my
secondary goals that lead to my primary goal
goal number one is identifying who the parents
of john townley is and if i just leave it up here then i
won't be able to keep track of my notes i don't have a hypothesis yet because i
haven't a clue what i i don't know i can add sources to
research and then add my notes but for now i'm just adding my goals
the next one goal number two is that i want to validate john's
death notice i don't have any sources for his death record so how do i
know that this information is true and if i surge
his death records i might find clues to the path so i definitely want to check
out the death record what's really great about your research plan is you can add
more sub goals as you stumble across them all you have to do
especially when it's digital is highlight control and paste
and then change the gold number and type a new goal
and once you're all done then you can come back here
and put in more information so yes i could put in
validate the relationships to his spouse and his children so i can put the
hypothesis of the children here and what records i need to search birth
marriage death but then the other records that i find
over on where ah on our family search wiki
say oh based on this time and place i need to check out these records as well
so utilize the genealogy research plans to
help you get more focused and save time
by knowing what your research to do list is you wouldn't
take a trip without having a map so don't do genealogy without a research
plan if you want more tips and tricks on how
to be a better genealogist check out this playlist here
and to continue on our brick well busting journey
make sure you check out this playlist