Knowing The Right Territory Significantly Helps Your Genealogy Research - article by Good English Article Sites

Knowing The Right Territory Significantly Helps Your Genealogy Research

Knowing the shifts in political boundaries and jurisdictions for the places where your ancestors lived helps you determine who kept records about them. I wish I could tell you that researching in Kentucky is the same as researching in Russia, but it isn't. It isn't even the same as researching in Kansas. Each geopolitical area had different laws and created different records.

Knowing the shifts in political boundaries and jurisdictions for the areas where your ancestors lived helps you look in the correct places for their records. You need to know when that state and county were formed and started keeping records (not always the same thing). You should chart the jurisdictional history of every county where your ancestors resided - and often for their neighboring counties, too.

For example, Campbell County, Tennessee, was formed in 1806. Several of my ancestors signed petitions for the formation of that new county. To find records of them before 1806, I have to look in the county that had prior jurisdiction for their community. This was Anderson County, which was formed in 1801. Before 1801, I have to look in Knox County, which was formed in 1792. And the list goes on. Governmental policies continue to affect a records location today - if it still exists.

One of your biggest challenges is to recognize the different ways your ancestors' names were spelled and written. If your ancestors' names changed for one reason or another, that event can hold up progress on your family tree indefinitely. It is easy to miss your ancestors name in a record if it was spelled phonetically or you can't decipher the handwriting. This is compounded when original records are extracted, alphabetized, and then published in electronic formats.

Terminology: Sooner or later, you'll need some foreign language skills. You usually don't need to be fluent, but you do need a basic knowledge of your ancestor's language (such as the words for christening and grandmother), dialect (which may indicate where they came from), and alphabet (enough to recognize their name when you see it in records written in that language). For the really tough research problems, you can always hire a professional.

The older the records, the more archaic the language and the greater your need for a specialized dictionary. When a doctor's diary, an obituary, or other death record says your ancestor died of dropsy, he didn't just drop dead - or maybe he did. Look dropsy up in a dictionary of archaic medical terms. Genealogy not only deals with foreign languages and technical terms, but also has a language of its own.

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