"An Irish Wake" by M. Woolf (Wikimedia Commons) We've all been there - burning the midnight oil, feverishly hunting for a birth or marriage or whatever, hopelessly scouring the ether for something, anything that will give you the breakthrough you need with your current people puzzle. My Snacks drawer is rammed with good things but you know that a bit of order is called for and you need to focus on one type of vital life event or type of evidence.
So, join me for a midnight feast where I've organised my collection of links to reference pages and record collections so that you can focus your research. There are 7 pages so far, for Births, Baptisms, Marriages, Deaths, Burials, Monumental Inscriptions and Wills.
Yes, you will see the same links repeated across these pages but that's just the way some collections are organised. These links are not exhaustive by any means but there are plenty to get your teeth into.
Also, you can see that I've been quite careful to separate the different types of event or evidence. Apart from birth and death, none of the others are a given in the life of any of your ancestors or relatives. They may never have married or were not of a faith that practised baptism. They may have been cremated. Their names may never have been inscribed on the family gravestone, especially if they died very young. Equally, don't be too quick to write off the possibility that there may be unexpected evidence. For example, I have seen people remembered on family gravestones, yet they were actually buried elsewhere. Equally, many people assume that only the wealthy made a will, which is not entirely true. If your Irish ancestor died in Scotland, there may be an inventory of their possessions.
My advice is to focus on one specific event and try to be as exhaustive as you can when hunting. It's also very easy to introduce bias when you are hunting - "Did I find the candidate marriage before I found the birth and that's why I stopped searching for any other births when I found one that was about the right age?" So, be methodical and step away from the keyboard when the sugar rush gets to be too much! Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett!
So, join me for a midnight feast where I've organised my collection of links to reference pages and record collections so that you can focus your research. There are 7 pages so far, for Births, Baptisms, Marriages, Deaths, Burials, Monumental Inscriptions and Wills.
Yes, you will see the same links repeated across these pages but that's just the way some collections are organised. These links are not exhaustive by any means but there are plenty to get your teeth into.
Also, you can see that I've been quite careful to separate the different types of event or evidence. Apart from birth and death, none of the others are a given in the life of any of your ancestors or relatives. They may never have married or were not of a faith that practised baptism. They may have been cremated. Their names may never have been inscribed on the family gravestone, especially if they died very young. Equally, don't be too quick to write off the possibility that there may be unexpected evidence. For example, I have seen people remembered on family gravestones, yet they were actually buried elsewhere. Equally, many people assume that only the wealthy made a will, which is not entirely true. If your Irish ancestor died in Scotland, there may be an inventory of their possessions.
My advice is to focus on one specific event and try to be as exhaustive as you can when hunting. It's also very easy to introduce bias when you are hunting - "Did I find the candidate marriage before I found the birth and that's why I stopped searching for any other births when I found one that was about the right age?" So, be methodical and step away from the keyboard when the sugar rush gets to be too much! Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett!
RSS Feed
