Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about the Southern Claims Commission. This record set was created for loyal southerners to seek redress for supplies seized by the Union Army during the Civil War. Many free people of color filed claims. Many witness and personal statements of former slave owners and the formerly enslaved are included. To access the records, use the index at Ancestry.com and follow the ideas at the FamilySearch Wiki article...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about records created during the New Deal in the 1930s that can help research African American ancestors. This is the third part in our series on researching African Americans in federal government documents. Diana shares more record groups she learned about during her IGHR course, including the 1940 census, WPA Personnel records, CCC Enrollee Records, the American Guide Series, Slave Narratives, and the Historical Records Survey. Links...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about researching African American ancestors in United States federal records using land and military records. We discuss laws that impacted free black people and freedmen in the reconstruction era. Many records were created because of the Homestead Act of 1862 and Southern Homestead Act of 1866. We go over a brief history of African American involvement in wars beginning with the Revolutionary War up until the Vietnam...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about researching African American records in U.S. Federal government documents. This is part one in the series. We discuss the Freedmen’s Bureau, the Freedmen’s Bank, and the U.S. Federal Census. Join us as Diana shares what she learned from the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR) in Deborah A. Abbott’s course, “Researching African American Ancestors: Government Documents and Advanced Tools” and from exploring these record sets....
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about identifying family photos and using family photos as a genealogical source. Learn how to use clues in the photo to figure out the date and the people in the picture. Maureen shares expert tips from her experience working with old photographs. She also shares a little about some of her photo projects, including the Last Muster project and Old Providence. Links The Photo Detective Podcast https://maureentaylor.com/...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about how to write a research report after your have completed your research plan. Typically a client report is about research in progress. You discuss what was found in the amount of time that was allotted. A report for yourself can be similar. Discuss the starting objective and what was known, then go through the searches that were performed and what was found. Join us as we...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about recording your searches in a research log. We talk about the benefits of using spreadsheet over a document for a log and discuss the tools we like to use – Excel, Google Docs, Airtable. We go over an example from Diana’s Nancy (Briscoe) Frazier research log for how to fill out the columns. We also discuss what to do with your research log when you get...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about creating reference note citations for your genealogical sources. In this fifth part of our revisiting the Research Like a Pro steps series, we discuss crafting citations the first time you look at a source and saving that in your research log (which we will discuss next week). Following your research plan, creating citations, and research logging all happen simultaneously. Tune in to hear more about the...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about research planning. How do you know which sources to search? It comes from the work you’ve done previously. You have reviewed all the known information and organized it chronologically. You have reviewed the locality and what records are available. Now create a hypothesis and think of records that could test it. Brainstorm a list of sources to search that could answer your objective and then prioritize...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about locality research. As we revisit the steps of the research like a pro process, we are discussing Diana’s project about Nancy Briscoe. Nancy lived in several places, but this objective focused on her early years, during which time she lived in Arkansas and Missouri. Diana created two simple locality guides for two Missouri counties and used the Arkansas state guide she had already created. We...
