Have you heard of the term “nuncupative will” and wondered what one would look like? If you have never come across this term, here’s your chance to learn something new. Our research often throws us curves in the form of new types of documents. If we’re going to become excellent...
In our podcast episode today, Diana and I discuss research logs. You know, that dreaded spreadsheet that you should keep when you’re doing research. We will discuss a few different types of research logs, including Research Ties, spreadsheets, tables, paper logs, and the research notebook. We will also talk about...
Today’s podcast episode is about source citations. We’ll discuss when you need to make citations, how to do it, and the questions to ask that will guide you as you create them: who, what, when, where within, and where in the world. If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of...
We are loving Education Week at Brigham Young University this week. We’ve been attending classes, enjoying lunches with friends, and most of all, we are enjoying sharing and teaching about family history. Thank you to everyone who has been attending our classes. It has been great to meet you and...
Do you have 15 minutes to spare for making a little map magic? Would you like to explore the location where your ancestor lived? With county boundaries changing throughout the 18th and 19th centuries you need to do a little investigating to figure out the lay of the land. Would...
Today’s podcast episode is all about why you need to start creating research plans for every project, and how to do it. There are fives steps: Create a document with objective at top, compile a summary of known facts, write a hypothesis, make a list of sources to search, then...
Today Diana and I are going to wrap up our discussion of locality research. In last week’s episode we talked about the first two question to ask: “What happened?” and “Where did it happen?” Today, we are talking about the last question: “Why did it happen?” This episode is all...
Diana and Peggy Lauritzen at the BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy, 2018 When is the last time you went outside of your genealogical comfort zone and learned something unrelated to your usual research area? One of my favorite sayings is, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” That...
Today we’re talking about preparing to research by learning more about the where your ancestor lived. Doing locality research is absolutely essential! Previously, we talked about objectives in epsidode 2, and analysis in episode 3. Those are the first steps in a research project. Today, Diana and I are going...
Diana and I decided to start a podcast to be able to share with more people our research methods and strategies. We are so excited for you to join us! In the Research Like a Pro podcast, we will discuss how to take your family history research to the next...