Genealogy Chat

deborah Chester Decicding what you want out of your research determines the sources you use and the methods-- some people just want to follow one line back as far as they can, some ,like me enjoy the mental challenge of the detective work,and source widely, and finding relatives is a bonus, some people wnt to find living descendants so you have to use censuses to find all the siblings. If you have an ancestor called john Smith and want to find his parents it just makes more sense to track his brother Huntingdon fortescue Smith via the censuses- they will most often have the same parents anyway and an unusual name is so much easier to track. I love censuses because they are so more interesting than certificates- you find out about their lives and jobs and gossip, when the lodger in a later census ends up falling in love with one of the household etc---so basically- it's horses for courses, so my tip is spread your research wide, dont rely just on one source and one spelling and enjoy the chase!