RLP 372: Onsite Research: Beyond Digitized Records

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 372: Onsite Research – Beyond Digitized Records. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (49s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (52s):
I’m doing great. I’ve been writing a lot lately and it’s been really fun, but also a little bit tiring sitting down and writing so much. Why does writing take so long?

Diana (1m 3s):
Well, because we have to get our thoughts in order. After we’ve done the research, then we have to get it all correlated and put together in a way that makes sense. So that’s really hard sometimes with genealogy.

Nicole (1m 15s):
Right? It is. And I could write up what I had already found, but then I always have questions as I’m writing that I think, oh, I can just check that really fast. So then I’m doing some more research as I’m writing, which is an interesting thing. And so then I can compare like, okay, do I like writing as I go? Because that’s what I usually do when I’m writing my report, is I’m still researching and writing or do I like just putting everything in a log and then writing it up? And sometimes I feel like I can’t correlate as well if I do that.

Diana (1m 47s):
Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it, because sometimes that’s better because you can waste a lot of time writing as you go if at the end of your research you finally put it all together and then you would write your report differently.

Nicole (2m 1s):
Yeah,

Diana (2m 2s):
There’s, there’s a couple different ways to do that And I, I personally like to write in my research log and have really good, you know, information in there that I can copy and paste into a report. But yeah, I always am adding a little extra research as I’m writing as well, especially if you’re doing more like a proof argument because you realize you need to do a little bit more to get to reasonably exhaustive research and you didn’t check this place or you didn’t check that place. So I think that’s where it gets really challenging if you’re trying to write some proof.

Nicole (2m 36s):
Right, and that’s kind of where I’m headed with this report And I feel like I’m getting closer to reasonably exhaustive research and wanting to make this into a proof argument. And it includes DNA, which always takes a long time to write about because there’s just so many decisions to make about who I’m going to use as evidence. I’ve found so many matches for this question And I can’t include them all. So now I have to pick which ones to use and then I have to document the lines of dissent. So it’s time consuming, but it’s really valuable.

Diana (3m 7s):
It is. And this is going to be so great when you have this all ready to go.

Nicole (3m 12s):
Right. Well, as you know, the report that I’m working on is the one that I’m going to be presenting in September in the Research Like a Pro Webinar Series. So let’s just talk about that. So our announcements for today are that the next webinar is September 20th at 11:00 AM Mountain Time, and the title is Migration and Motherhood: DNA Confirms Sally (Keaton) Reeves’ Family and Western Path. And so I’ll be the presenter for that. And I’m really excited to share this research I’ve been doing all year and it’s, it kind of started as a small project in the Research Like a Pro mini challenge in January where I wanted to work on finding all the siblings of our ancestor, Lucinda Keaton Welch.

Nicole (3m 58s):
And one of the ones that we knew nothing about was Sally Reeves, and she’s mentioned in her father’s estate file in Pendleton District, South Carolina. And she was listed as an absent heir who had left the state with her husband William Reeves. And they had moved away, but where? And during the mini challenge I had figured out that her family moved to Tennessee and there were a lot of different men named William Reeves there. So it was challenging, but at the last minute in my research plan, I found a clue, a marriage in Gibson County, Tennessee of a person who had the same middle name as some friends, associates, and neighbors of the Keaton’s in South Carolina, the Mauldins.

Nicole (4m 43s):
And so that was kind of the breakthrough that was fun. And I ended up finding one of Sally’s sons, John Mauldin Reeves in Mississippi in 1850 and in later records. And it was really neat to see how John Mauldin Reeve’s distinctive middle name, Mauldin, preserved his grandmother’s maiden name, providing a connection through the generations despite this migration path. And so following this family group through census records revealed Sally’s migration from South Carolina through Tennessee and Mississippi, and finally ending up in Arkansas. And there are a couple burned counties in Arkansas that she lived in. So that presented some more challenges, but DNA matches between descendants of Sally and descendants of Lucinda, also known as Lucindrilla Keaton provided additional evidence to help us identify Sally’s children.

Nicole (5m 35s):
So I say us, but this has been my research project this year, so I guess it’s just me really working hard to identify all of her children and figure out kind of the household makeup in 1830, 1840, 1850. And I recently just had a breakthrough figuring out when Sally’s husband died, William Reeves. So it’s been really neat. So if you want to join us for this webinar, that’s September 20th. The topics are migration patterns, southern research, estate records, census analysis, naming patterns is a huge one, it’s been really cool to see the naming patterns that have been able to provide evidence of a connection, autosomal DNA, geographic analysis, family reconstruction, cemetery records, newspapers, and the places I’ve already mentioned in South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

Nicole (6m 27s):
So it’ll be a fun webinar and we hope to see you there. If you have not registered for the webinar series this year yet, you can still do so and you’ll have access to all the previously recorded webinars from the year, and then the you can attend the upcoming ones live. Also, our fall Research Like a Pro study group is starting and the registration has ended, so we’re getting ready to start that this week. But if you realize you forgot to sign up and you really want to come, just email us and let us know. And maybe we’ll let you in if we have one more spot. The next study group after this one will be the Research Like a Pro with DNA study group in February of 2026.

Nicole (7m 7s):
So be thinking if you want to join us with that and what project you might wanna work on. I know for my fall study group, I’m going to be continuing the reasonably exhaustive research on Sally Keaton Reeves and finding all of the evidence I need to wrap up this proof argument that she is in the Keaton family. And I just have to say it’s been so exciting to find all these branches of the Keaton Descendancy that have been lost to our knowledge and bringing them back together. And Sally’s descendants kind of scattered and several died and they didn’t seem to be connected. And so it’s been neat to find these branches and connect them again.

Nicole (7m 51s):
We have the Texas State Genealogical Society Conference coming up. We’re really excited about that and we’re going to be presenting at that. So my two lectures are going to be Cotton Farming Through Generations Using Tax Records to Track Economic Status. And that’ll be a fun class. I’m excited to put that together because I’ll be sharing records about taxes that I found for my Harris family ancestors and my kinship determination project that I did for my BCG portfolio that I wrote last year. So I’m excited to do that one. And then my other class will be AI and Genealogy, Enhancing Your Research Process. So kind of an overview of how AI can help you along the way.

Nicole (8m 32s):
And then Diana’s classes, she’s going to be sharing one with the live portion of the conference, so that one will be neat. It’s called Small Bites, Big Impact: Crafting Focused Narratives to Illuminate Ancestral Lives. And then her other class will be From the Embers: Uncovering Female Ancestry Through Cluster Research and DNA when Records Perish.

Diana (8m 54s):
Right. And I am looking forward to sharing both of those as well. It’s always fun to be able to share your research. And the one titled From the Embers is about my burned county research and Clemsy Cline that I’ve talked about quite a bit on the podcast. And it’s just exciting when you think that there’s just no hope at all when you have these burn counties and so much record loss, then you actually figure it out and that one will have some DNA that provides that final little bit of proof, which I really hope to find. So I’m excited to get that lecture all created and ready to go. And then my other one about the Focused Narratives is fun because I talked about how you can just take one little aspect of your ancestors’ life and then write about that.

Diana (9m 43s):
And so you get the history done little by little. And we have talked a lot about on the podcast the different stories that I have done that with, you know, specific little things like my grandmother’s time teaching school or my dad’s education. So I am excited to share some tips for how to do that as well. Well, let’s get to our topic for the day, which is talking all about Onsite Research. And this is so great. I think sometimes we forget with all of the great things available digitally, that there are still lots of records that are there hiding in some basement of the courthouse or an archive storage room or a historical society filing cabinet.

Diana (10m 31s):
So we are loving FamilySearch’s on Full Text Search, you know, which is all online and helping us find so many things. But I think there is a danger that we don’t dig deeper. You know, back in the day where we had to go look at microfilm or look in books, we had to work really hard to find the records. And we don’t want to have it be so easy now that we forget that sometimes it is a little bit harder and takes more work to uncover some of those records we really need.

Nicole (11m 3s):
Well, I feel kind of like a beginner when it comes to Onsite Research facilities, but I’ve been trying really hard in the last year to throw myself into learning this really important skill so that I can achieve reasonably exhaustive research. And one of the motivations I had for this was working on my kinship determination project, otherwise known as the KDP in my BCG certification portfolio. And if you don’t know, BCG stands for the Board for Certification of Genealogists and they are a credentialing group. And if you submit a portfolio of your work samples, they will have judges review it and give you feedback and tell you if you passed or not.

Nicole (11m 46s):
So I did pass the first half with my kinship termination project and my document work. So I was really excited about that. And now I just have to finish the second half. But anyway, with the KDP, I really wanted to make sure I was not overlooking any records that were only available offline, that hadn’t been digitized yet, that are in the courthouse, that are in the archives, whatever. So I really tried to pursue any leads I could that led to records only in Onsite Research facilities. The experience has been eye-opening and rewarding. And last year I traveled to Love County, Oklahoma to visit the courthouse there and the Historical Society.

Nicole (12m 31s):
And then recently this this year in conjunction with the National Genealogical Society Conference, we visited the Kentucky Historical Society together and that was really fun. And it’s full name is the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfurt. And while we were in Frankfurt, we also visited the Kentucky Department of Library and Archives. So we spent half the day in one place and half the day in the other place. Also, I recently took my children to the Brigham Young University Special Collections where we got to see our ancestors’ 1858 diary in person. And they told me he actually had a bunch of diaries that they had and they only brought out that one and they said they would bring out the other ones, but we didn’t have time to stay and look at all of them.

Nicole (13m 18s):
But it was really neat. Well, over the years I’ve also visited other facilities including the Family Search Library. That one’s probably the one I’m most familiar with. Also, my local Family Search Center for those digitized records that you could only view at a center ’cause they’re locked due to contracts. Also the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Library in Salt Lake City and the Church History Library in Salt Lake City for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And I also visited the Thomas Balch Library for History and Genealogy in Leesburg, Virginia and several other small libraries. I’ve also discovered the value of hiring researchers and working with repositories remotely.

Nicole (13m 58s):
And for my KDP I hired several researchers to retrieve records at various places: the National Archives, California State Archives, Texas State Library and Archives, and even the Los Animas County Colorado Courthouse. So that’s been really helpful because obviously we can’t always travel to every location that has the records we need. I’ve reached out directly to county clerks and sometimes they’re able to send me the records I need. For example, at Lampasas County, Texas, they sent me some marriage records that they had in their marriage books that weren’t online.

Nicole (14m 39s):
So this combination of hands-on experience and remote collaboration has taught me valuable lessons about when to travel yourself versus when to hire local expertise. And some of the trips I’ve been on have exceeded my expectations, like when I uncovered multiple relevant deeds and tax records in Love County that painted a complete picture of my ancestors’ financial life and others didn’t go quite as planned. Like when I spent several hours planning for a research trip at the Kentucky Department of Library and Archives as part of NGS conference, only to find out that the staff wasn’t planning to retrieve original records that day. So I learned a valuable lesson about preparation and communication.

Nicole (15m 21s):
On the brightside, I was able to use their onsite only court records index to find potential case files to order later. So that was good, but just not quite what I expected. So whether you are hitting a brick wall with online resources or you need to access records that just aren’t online, or you want to dive deeper into local collections that might hold unexpected treasures, Onsite Research is a valuable part of your genealogy experience. But being successful in our visits to the repositories require more than just showing up with a notebook and hoping for the best, right?

Diana (15m 57s):
Yes, indeed. And I feel like we’ve all done that where we just maybe don’t have time to prepare and that’s how we can do, you know, we’re just glad we grabbed a notebook and a pencil, but it really is better if you know exactly what you want to look at. And sometimes it can be tricky because the catalogs online may not be very easy to navigate like a state archive. Often we don’t know how to work our way through them. And so sometimes you do just have to show up and then have someone help you there. But you know, if we at least have a general idea of what we want to find, we’re going to be more successful. So I am, I’m totally on board with doing what you can to prepare, but I wanted to say that it’s so fun that you found out that there are more copies of the Kelsy Journal at the Brigham Young University Special Collections.

Diana (16m 45s):
When I went there a few years ago, they only had the one journal. I know they have some business account books, so maybe that’s what they were talking about.

Nicole (16m 54s):
Yeah, I’m not sure. They just said they had multiple years of his journals. I only saw the 1858 one. I know in the transcription we have of it, the derivative that someone typed, that it covers several years beyond 1858. I know there’s 1851 and two, and I think it goes all through the fifties. So it makes sense that it, it’s more than one volume.

Diana (17m 17s):
Right. Oh, I’m so curious if they have found something extra than when I was there, so that’s neat. Well, that’s awesome that you were able to take your children to have them look at something that was written a hundred way over a hundred fifty, a hundred seventy five years ago or close to it.

Nicole (17m 36s):
Yeah, kind of cool. I was super happy that it worked out because we were just in the area taking like a, our kids on a tour of Brigham Young University where we had gone to college and we were, I was like, oh, let’s go in the library. I spent a lot of time here when I was in college studying at the library. So we found a fun little room that had like a play area for students that have children, which is pretty common at BYU where you know, people get married and they keep going to school and they have a couple kids while they’re going to school. And so it’s kind of like a great place to study. Well, my husband stayed with the kids in there, the little ones. And then I took the bigger kids to go tour around the library somewhere and we walked by Special Collections, and I thought, oh, I should, we should just go in there.

Nicole (18m 18s):
And then while we were in there, I said, oh, I should just talk to the librarian and say, oh, can I get this journal? She’s like, sure, just fill out this thing. So I filled it out and then 10 minutes later we had the journal. So it was a pretty easy and lucky experience that they were free and it was available and it worked out

Diana (18m 37s):
Well. That is awesome. When I was there trying to look at it, I had to have an interview with the archivist. I don’t know what they thought I was gonna do with that journal. But anyway, I passed the interview and then I went in and was able to look at it. So that’s funny,

Nicole (18m 51s):
They had a stricter process back then!

Diana (18m 56s):
Apparently they did. So that’s fun. Well, let’s have a word from our Sponsor. Ever wondered what life was really like for your ancestors? With Newspapers.com you can explore the world they lived in through their eyes, in their time. Search over a billion newspaper pages dating from 1690 to 2025 and uncover the stories that shaped your family’s past from birth and wedding announcements to obituaries and community news. These pages hold the milestones and everyday moments that connect you to your roots, but it’s more than names and dates, it’s about standing in their shoes. Picture reading the local paper your great grandmother once held or stumbling on a forgotten article about your grandfather’s first business.

Diana (20m 1s):
These aren’t just clippings, they’re pieces of your family story. Newspapers.com turns curiosity into connection. Start your journey today at Newspapers.com because sometimes the past isn’t just history, it’s a story waiting to be discovered. Come make infinite discoveries today on Newspapers.com. Use promo code FamilyLocket for a 20% discount on your subscription. Well, I love that you are writing a series on Onsite Research from all the things that you’ve learned. So it looks like you’re going to guide us through every aspect of onsite genealogy research from the planning to maximizing our discoveries. So I’m excited to see what you’re going to share and each one of those posts, blog posts, and then we’ll do a, a podcast about it. We’ll have one specific actionable tip that you can actually try out right away. So what this will cover will be the very first things you need to do to prepare. I think sometimes that’s the trickiest part getting going.

Diana (20m 43s):
And so we can talked about things like preparing with a phone call, which might be really important like you mentioned, communication and how to decode the complex indexing systems that we find all the time. And then we’ll also be learning practical skills for working in the various repository types like courthouse basements and state archives and what to pack and how to handle photography restrictions and how to structure multi-day research trips. I think that’s really important because I know when I’ve gone often I feel like I’m just getting started and the two or three hours I allotted were not nearly enough.

Diana (21m 27s):
So I think it’s important to really consider that you might need more time than you gave yourself. So in this series we will also talked about problem solving strategies when things just don’t go like you thought they were going to go, and some communication techniques that will really help you to get good results. And then some advanced approaches like building research networks and following up effectively after your visit. And then we’ll just throughout try to help everyone understand how to make the most of these different facility types. So courthouses can be pretty informal depending on who’s in charge there.

Diana (22m 11s):
But then state archives can have very specific procedures and you know, can be much different. So we’ll, we’ll give you a view into that based on our experiences.

Nicole (22m 23s):
Well, we are going to have our next episodes be about preparing to visit Onsite Research facilities. And so we’ll draw these tips and things from our own experiences, our successful ones, and also the ones that didn’t work so well. So hopefully this will help you discover what works and what can go wrong and how to handle whatever challenges come up with grace and productivity. And so whether you’re planning your first courthouse visit or, like me, looking to build up confidence and optimize your repository research strategies, hopefully this series will help you with your Onsite Research adventures with better preparation and realistic expectations.

Nicole (23m 7s):
So I’m excited to talk about our next episode in the series about preparing and it’s really important to take some time ahead of time to think about what you’re looking for, having a focused research objective and connecting a specific ancestor to that target location and making sure you have a detailed timeline of when they lived and knowing exactly when they came there and when they left or died so that you avoid wasting time on irrelevant records. I think we’ve all done that before where you’re like looking in time before they even arrived in that area and realize, oh, this is not the right time period.

Nicole (23m 48s):
So it can be so important to spend that extra time before you go to get your timeline really nailed down as much as possible. And then understanding the localities formation dates and previous jurisdictions, figuring out which record collections exist and where they’re housed. Reviewing the facilities online catalog and procedures, a lot of the things that we do during locality research. And then of course, most importantly, always call ahead to verify the hours, check for any closures that aren’t listed on their website and learn about their research protocols. And this can really save you from disappointment and help make the most of your limited research time.

Nicole (24m 30s):
So let’s get excited to talked about that in our next episode.

Diana (24m 34s):
Oh, I’m excited for this series because I think this is something really needed to discuss and it’s fun that we both have some fun experiences to share with online, or Onsite, Research. We have plenty to share about online research as well, right? But, but Onsite Research is a whole different thing, so it’s gonna be great.

Nicole (24m 54s):
I just have to say that going to Love County, Oklahoma last year was just such an amazing trip. It was the time of my life, so it was, I just love that I had three days to really immerse myself in it. I didn’t have anyone else that needed me. I could just do what I wanted. And that was so liberating because as you know, I have five children at home, so my husband was going on a work trip, so he was working and I was just, I had the car And I went wherever I wanted. It was just great. That’s one of my tips is try to not have distractions and give yourself multiple days.

Diana (25m 34s):
Oh, that’s fun. Yeah. You know, you are a true genealogist when you get super excited to be in the courthouse looking through old books.

Nicole (25m 42s):
Well, that’s exciting, obviously. Alright, well we’ll talk more about all these things in upcoming episodes. And in the meantime, we’d love to hear from you about your successful or unsuccessful research strips. Let us know. Send us an email, put it on the, on the blog post that goes along with this podcast episode in the comments. And we’d love to share any of your research experiences on the podcast As we go throughout this series to kind of hear from you, our listeners. And thanks for listening everyone. Alright,

Diana (26m 11s):
Thanks everyone. We’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Nicole (26m 14s):
Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.