RLP 374: Preparing for Onsite Research – Part 1

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro, episode 374: Preparing for Onsite Research – Part 1. 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 (48s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (50s):
I’m doing really well and I’m excited to talked about our topic. What have you been working on? How are things going?

Diana (57s):
Well, I thought I would talked about a new book that I’ve been reading, which some of our listeners may already have. It is Elizabeth Shown Mills’ latest book on citations and it’s called Your Stripped Bear Guide to Citing and Using History Sources. So it’s got a cute picture on the front of a man covering up himself with a land patent because he is nude or naked. So anyway, it is cute, but I’ve been enjoying it. You know, Elizabeth Shown Mills just has so much to teach us and the first bit is all about source analysis and talking about original versus derivative sources And I like that she gives a lot of examples and really makes you think about what you are looking at.

Diana (1m 43s):
So just like in her other books of Evidence Explained, her full length books, she has that initial chapter and then the rest of it goes into guidelines for documentation. And I am looking forward to just putting this on my shelf and having another resource. You know, sometimes you just wanna pick up a quick and easy little book to get an idea for something. And this has got all of the new templates that she has in her fourth edition and then it has a glossary with some terms and some ideas for further studies so, and an index. So anyway, I’m looking forward to reading all the way through it and then knowing exactly what It is and what I can use it for.

Diana (2m 27s):
And I would recommend anyone who doesn’t have any of Elizabeth’s other works on citations yet to just start with this one ’cause it’s most up to date and It is a lot smaller.

Nicole (2m 41s):
That’s great. It, it can be daunting to purchase a very large book like Evidence Explained and feel like how am I gonna ever read all of this? But It is like a reference. But It is nice that she has the newer option with the the Stripped Bear Guide so that you can feel like you’ve read the whole thing.

Diana (2m 58s):
Right. I appreciate this use of templates too, because no matter how hard you try, you are still going to have something pop up that is not actually referenced in the full length Evidence Explained. There’s always some odd documents, something that’s just in your research and maybe she hasn’t come across or no one else has come across in their research and so you know, having templates will help create a citation for anything, help you get started. Well, let’s do some announcements. We are excited about our Research Like a Pro Webinar Series for 2025 and in particular the Saturday September 20th offering 11:00 AM Mountain Time, which features you, Nicole, and I’m excited to hear in this format all about your research.

Diana (3m 49s):
So the title is Migration and Motherhood: DNA Confirms Sally (Keaton) Reeves’ Family and Western Path.

Diana (5m 1s):
So, Sally (Keaton) Reeves appears in her father’s 1830 Pendleton District, South Carolina, estate file as an absent heir who had left the state. With her husband William Reeves, she had moved away from South Carolina by 1830, but where? Her father’s estate mentioned Tennessee, but many William Reeves lived there in 1830. The discovery of William Reeves as the son of Burgess and Frances (Mauldin) Reeves, who lived near William Keaton in 1800 Pendleton District, was a breakthrough. This led to finding John Mauldin Reeves in Mississippi in 1850 and later records. John’s distinctive middle name preserved his grandmother’s maiden name, providing a connection through generations. Following this family group through census records revealed Sally’s migration from South Carolina through Tennessee and Mississippi to Arkansas. DNA matches between descendants of Sally and her sister Lucindrilla Keaton (Nicole’s 4th-great-grandmother), provided additional evidence for the identification of Sally’s children and helped verify family relationships suggested by traditional records. Well this will be a great webinar and it will really point out the importance of studying those associates and using naming patterns. So many things that can help us tie families together when they’ve migrated. The next Research Like a Pro study group will be a DNA and that’s February of 2026. And if you are excited to join us and you would like to try being a peer group leader, the application is on our website and you will receive complimentary registration. Please join our newsletter for coupons to find out our latest news. And we are excited about upcoming conference, the Texas State Genealogists Conference, which will be all virtual.

Diana (5m 48s):
It’ll be held November 7th through 8th. Nicole is presenting two lectures, Cotton Farming Through Generations: Using Tax Records to Track Economic Status, and AI & Genealogy: Enhancing Your Research Process. And I am presenting two lectures, Small Bites, Big Impact: Crafting Focused Narratives to Illuminate Ancestral Lives, and From the Embers: Uncovering Female Ancestry Through Cluster Research and DNA When Records Perish. So we are excited to present these lectures and we will be recording those ahead of time, which is how this conference works. But for my Small Bites Big Impact lecture, it will be part of the “live”

Diana (6m 32s):
presentation. I say live in quotes because the live part is following the the recording. Then I will be there live to answer questions. And so we hope a lot of you will sign up and join us at that conference.

Nicole (6m 47s):
Who do you think you’ll talked about in your female ancestry class?

Diana (6m 50s):
Well, that class is all about Clemsy Cline and I’ve done several projects for her finally ending up with DNA to verify all of the things that I had found that tied together for the documentary portion. So it’s a fun case study, especially because we had so many burn counties where she was living. And so it’s exciting to actually have made progress on something that I never thought I would. So it’ll be fun. I’m excited to talked about that.

Nicole (7m 24s):
Yay, it’s gonna be so great. Well today’s topic is Onsite Research Preparation. And this is such an important topic because we’ve probably all had some kind of experience where the research trip we planned didn’t go quite as well as we wanted it to, usually due to not understanding something about the facility or just something that wasn’t planned out very well. And It is not fun to spend time and money traveling to a facility only to leave frustrated or empty handed. And so in the next three episodes we’re diving into how to prepare for an Onsite Research trip and the essential research planning that should be done in advance.

Nicole (8m 9s):
And the good news is that with proper preparation you can avoid those disappointing experiences and make every research trip productive. Many of these preparation steps follow the same Research Like a Pro process you’re already familiar with, starting with a research objective, timeline, and analysis of starting point information, locality research, and research planning. So throughout this episode we’ll be sharing some examples from two contrasting research trips of mine, A successful trip to Love county, Oklahoma for my kinship determination project, KDP, and a less successful trip to Kentucky that wasn’t part of my BCG certification portfolio, but was continuing the research from my KDP to extend the Harris Family line back another generation.

Diana (8m 57s):
So let’s start off by talking about the critical importance of research planning for onsite visits. So even though we know onsite research could unlock those records that are not available anywhere else, it’s also got its own unique challenges and that makes it really important for us to prepare ourselves so thoroughly. So when we’re at home in front of our computer, we can explore these collections at our own pace. But when we go on site, these facilities have limited hours restricted access procedures and unique organizational systems that can quickly really cause us to be frustrated.

Diana (9m 38s):
So the difference between a successful research trip and a frustrating waste of time and money often comes down to how well you have planned in advance. So if you just have a limited time at a facility, perhaps just a day or two, then every hour counts and those hours go by so fast when you are in a facility like that. So thorough research planning ensures you arrive with clear objectives, precise timelines and detailed knowledge of available records and that’ll help you to work really efficiently and maximize your discoveries. So as Nicole’s experiences will demonstrate, if we invest more time in really good preparation, then we will accomplish so much more than if we just arrive on the spot hoping to figure things out.

Nicole (10m 28s):
Well the first step in preparing for an onsite research trip is creating a clear research objective. This follows the beginning steps of the Research Like a Pro process and is crucial for focused research. And the experiences I’m sharing today arose from two different scenarios that might lead you to onsite research. One is working on an existing project where you realize you need records only available at a specific facility and the other is planning to be near a research facility and wanting to make the most of your visit by developing a relevant research objective. So I think those also were part of the reason why one was more successful and the other one wasn’t because one was kind of a like okay, I need to hurry and make an objective.

Nicole (11m 10s):
Whereas the first, like I was working on my KDP and there were records I needed.

Diana (11m 16s):
Yeah, it makes a really big difference if you are thoroughly immersed in the research because I’ve done the same thing, you know, researching in a place and I know the records that I have forward and backward versus just going in and saying, oh well I’ve got a family here, let’s see what we can find. It just makes a huge difference. So our first scenario is project driven research. And this is where Nicole worked on her KDP for certification and discovered that one of the localities that was really crucial to the second generation, or to two generations actually, in the three generation family narrative had virtually no digitized records at Family Search.

Diana (11m 57s):
And this was in Love County, Oklahoma, which to me is so interesting and sad with so much of our family there that they have not got those records digitized yet. So this overarching objective for the KDP was to prove kinship between three generations of the family and then uniquely identify each individual putting them in their historic and geographical time and place. So those three generations were James B. Harris and he was born in 1819, died in 1899, his son John C. Harris, 1846 to 1918, and his son DocK H Harris, 1886 to 1957.

Diana (12m 41s):
So the specific research objective that really made Nicole want to take this trip was to check out the financial and property status of John C. Harris. So he’s the middle generation and so he was the one born 1846 in Missouri. And then during his residence in Love County, Oklahoma, which was between 1895 and 1918, to discover more about him there, and then to further identify him as the father Dock Harris. So as that middle generation, she knew that his financial records would be really important for historical context as well as linking him to his father and his son.

Diana (13m 24s):
So she had found a 1914 notice in the newspaper about a deed where John was the grantee. And since those deeds and tax records were not available online, she knew a trip to the courthouse would be very helpful for this project. Now let’s have a word from our Sponsor.

Diana (14m 6s):
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Diana (14m 45s):
Picture reading the local paper your great grandmother once held or stumbling on a forgotten article about your grandfather’s first business. 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. Use promo code FamilyLocket for a 20% discount on your subscription. So one year after Nicole’s successful Love County Research, she was attending the NGS conference in Louisville, and I was there too, and had the opportunity to do a research trip at the Kentucky Department for Librarian Archives. The Kentucky Department of Librarian Archives visit was organized as part of the conference of the National Genealogical Conference held in Louisville, Kentucky in May, 2025. And NGS had offered this optional Frankfurt research trip where we could register for a bus excursion to Frankfurt and that was the home of this Kentucky department for Librarian Archives and Historical Society.

Diana (15m 37s):
So the trip was marketed in the conference catalog as a research trip and it led us to believe we would have full access to research the original materials. And Nicole was so excited because she’d been trying to do more in onsite research in her work to get more experience there. So she’d already turned in her Kinship Determination Project in December, but wanted to continue to research the Harris family, especially James B Harris’s origins. He was the oldest generation, and originally she had him in her KDP, but in December she ran out of time to add all his children because he had so many, and having to add their birth marriage and death information would just be take too much time, be too much.

Diana (16m 26s):
So she restructured it to make John C. Harris the top generation, then Dock the middle, and then Dock’s daughter, Ettie Belle, the third generation. And Ettie Belle is my grandmother, Nicole’s great-grandmother. So although James B Harris’s early life wasn’t included, we know he was born in Kentucky based on census enumerations in Texas in his later years. So for this Kentucky research opportunity, Nicole created a research objective to investigate his origins. He was born about 1819 in Kentucky and try to determine if it was Hardin County, Kentucky as many of the online family trees say, and to also just start researching his early life and family connections in Kentucky from about 1815 to 1840.

Diana (17m 17s):
So we have a guess that his father was John Harris who resided nearby in 1850 in Milam County, Texas. But Nicole didn’t know which Kentucky County they came from. So this objective was more exploratory in nature, investigating a hypothesis about the birthplace but without original records in a particular place within Kentucky to guide the research. So maybe you notice the key difference between these two objectives. The Love County objective was much more targeted and specific with clear dates, location and purpose, which really helped it to be successful. Whereas the Kentucky trip was more exploratory, which made the research more challenging due to less specific preparation.

Diana (18m 3s):
So this idea of having a clear research objective really can help you know exactly where to go, what to look for, and honestly the more focuses and specific your objective, the more productive your onsite research will be.

Nicole (18m 17s):
Right. I think we all know that intuitively, but it was just interesting to kind of compare the two objectives and the experiences and the whole package. Well obviously the next step in Research Like a Pro is to analyze and make a timeline and put together all the known information. And creating a timeline of known information is essential because you need to understand when your person lived in each location. And without this foundation you could waste time looking through irrelevant record collections or books. You know, volumes are usually usually have years on them and that kind of thing. And so when you’re looking through the volumes at the courthouse or whatever, you wanna know which ones to look in.

Nicole (19m 0s):
And so it’s so important to take the time to nail down exactly when they arrived, when they left, and gather any other pertinent timeline information like when did their relatives arrive and that kind of thing. And the difference between a thorough timeline and a hastily prepared one can make or break your onsite research trip. So let’s go through some examples from both of these trips.

Diana (19m 23s):
Well, for the Love County example, for the timeline, Nicole was thoroughly prepared because she knew so much about the family having researched ’em so thoroughly. So she knew she needed to know exactly when they did arrive in Love County, Oklahoma. And she knew they arrived before statehood in 1907 because they were present in the 1900 census of Chickasaw Nation Indian territory. So she conducted an extended family analysis of John C. Harris and his daughter’s families because they had gotten married in the 1890s and some of the children born to those daughters were born before 1895 in Texas.

Diana (20m 3s):
But about 1896 was the first birth of a Harris grandson in Indian territory. So Nicole entered all her sources into Airtable and then created a timeline and even entered some “maybe” records, one of which turned out to belong to a different “JC Harris” who arrived in Indian territory earlier. So this analysis gave us this precise timeline. Before 1896, the Harris grandchildren were born in Texas. For example, Alfred B Bone was born to Margaret Cinderella (Harris) Bone in Texas, January, 1895. January, 1896 was the first Harris grandson born in Indian territory, Peter Homer Moore, born to Martha Rosetta (Harris) Moore.

Diana (20m 44s):
And in 1900 we have John C. Harris in the census, it’s Chickasaw Nation Indian territory at the time. And in 1913 we have John C. Harris who purchased land from Alan B. Collins and Ava Collins and that was from a newspaper article. And then 1918 John dies on 23 August, 1918 in Love County. So this was a very specific timeline And I love Nicole that you looked at the grandchildren to see who was born where, because it seemed like this family did all migrate up to Love county from Texas.

Nicole (21m 20s):
Yeah, when I finally figured that out, it was so helpful because I had been really wondering when the Harrises arrived in Indian territory. And I even did waste some time looking online at different online resources from prior to the 1895 time that I finally learned, and I had found this other guy JC Harris on some things and, and it was in a different part of Indian territory. And when I finally learned more about the locality and understood kind of the like different nations within it and how far away things were, I realized, oh, that’s the way up in different part of Indian Territory that the that guy lived and, and also things were kind of convoluted in Texas, you know, the 1890 census being missing really makes it a long time in between censuses to know where people were.

Nicole (22m 8s):
So they moved around a bit. I finally figured out with tax records as well to nail down like where they were in that timeframe before they moved to Indian Territory. But it was kind of a black hole for a while.

Diana (22m 20s):
Oh yeah, that’s been a black hole for all of our ancestor because all of them moved between 1880 census in Texas to Indian Territory in 1900. And it’s been so tricky trying to figure out that. And you know, some of the others I’ve discovered other kinds of records that have helped nail that down. But I just love this idea about really looking at the birthplaces of the children or at least what they report, you know, where they were born. So that’s really neat.

Nicole (22m 50s):
Yeah, I actually had a, a fun other source that helped with this, which was an obituary of one of these sisters, I think it was Martha Rosetta (Harris) Moore. And it said how long she had lived in the county, in Love County. And So it went back all the way to 1895. It was like perfectly correlating with the births of the children also. So that helped and it was just a neat thing to finally get those clues And I didn’t realize they probably all arrived together. But then once I thought of that I wondered, oh maybe they did all arrive together ’cause they all lived together in their, in Indian Territory in the 1900s. So maybe they came all as a group. I had wondered if maybe, you know, one person came first and the rest followed.

Nicole (23m 33s):
And it does seem like some of the daughter’s families didn’t all go at the same time. There were some other daughters who were still in Texas in 1900, but at least these two daughters were there. And James B. Harris actually died there in 1899. So I had a clue that they were there before 1900, at least by one year.

Diana (23m 53s):
That’s a good clue. Well, and it’s tricky because that was just such a huge migration of people from Texas going up to Indian Territory right there at that time, late 1880s, 1890s, just because of the land becoming available with the tribes kind of being forced to relinquish the land, letting the settlers come in. So it was this huge migration and then to be missing the 1890 census is just so sad for us. So good job figuring out some alternative strategies to figure this out.

Nicole (24m 26s):
Thanks. Well it was really good to know, you know, the exact times and dates that they would arrive. But it was also helpful to know that John C. Harris purchased land. And I don’t know that I would’ve been quite as motivated to go to Love County if I hadn’t known that there would be a deed there with his name on it. So knowing that he was gonna be on a deed was very motivational. Well, in contrast, the timeline that I made for my Kentucky research trip was a little bit more hastily prepared. We not only were we getting ready to give a a lecture at the National Genealogical Society Conference, we were traveling right before and just getting all the things ready.

Nicole (25m 10s):
So it was wasn’t until the hotel room the night before that I actually had time to sit down and think about the research trip and make a timeline of the Harris family in Kentucky. So I quickly developed a migration path for James B. Harris and his hypothesized father, which is John Harris. So we have a repetition there of the name, probably one of the most common names out there, John Harris. We do have an 1850 census showing James B. Harris and John Harris living in the same county and the children that people have put with John Harris, some of them associated with the each other.

Nicole (25m 50s):
And so there are some pieces of indirect evidence linking them all together. For example, one of John’s inferred daughters married a Matthew Rolston and then Matthew Rolston and James B. Harris were neighbors and like witnesses on different things for each other. So it all seems to be correlating, I just need more information. So using the 1850 census of this hypothesized father John Harris, I was able to put together a migration path and it indicated the estimated birthplaces of the hypothesized children of John Harris. So two of the inferred sons lived with John in 1850, while three of his potential children lived in their own households nearby.

Nicole (26m 34s):
So using all of that 1850 census data from the various households, I put together this timeline in 1805, John Harris was born in Kentucky and then a potential son James B. Harris, which is our ancestor, was born in 1819 in Kentucky. And then in 1820, looking at the census there in Kentucky, there were 28 men named John Harris living in Kentucky in various counties. So it wasn’t going to be easy to just figure this out, that common name problem. In 1822, potential daughter Sarah Ann Harris Rolston was born in Kentucky and in 1825 potential daughter Rachel Harris Grow was born in Kentucky.

Nicole (27m 20s):
And then in 1829 inferred son William Harris was born in Missouri. So I kind of see like a timeframe where Kentucky Records will be useful. And it’s basically going up until 1825 to 1829, sometime in there they seem to have moved to Missouri. Then in 1830, I had found a census in Missouri that looked like it could be John Harris that’s related to us. It’s not for sure though, because there’s several others. And this one was in Sheridan County, but he did have the right age range for a John Harris born in 1805. Then in 1833 and another inferred son named Benjamin Harris was born in Missouri.

Nicole (28m 1s):
And then in 1840 another census in Sheridan County, Missouri had a James Harris. So that was tricky because I couldn’t find John and James Harris in the same county in Missouri like I wanted to. It wasn’t really working out. It was one was there in 30 and one was there in 40, but they were all there together in 1850 in Milam County, Texas with, and John was living with an inferred wife, Elizabeth, and those inferred sons, William and Benjamin. So based on all this analysis, it appeared that they lived in Kentucky from 1819 to 1825, and then unknown when they moved to Missouri. But from 1829 to 1833, they were definitely in Missouri according to the children’s birthplaces.

Nicole (28m 44s):
And then again, the exact time of departure from Missouri is uncertain, but records seemed to show they settled in Texas by 1850. And so the date ranges are pretty approximate, but some details could be established. Sadly, my sources didn’t provide an exact county within Kentucky to research. And this led me to look at online trees. And these are also sources, although some of them are less reliable than others, as you know, with online trees. And several trees stated, Hardin County Kentucky is the birthplace of James B. Harris. So I chose that as the county to focus on during my trip. The hypothesis was pretty vague, but I did need something to start with.

Nicole (29m 26s):
And so looking at the two timelines, the difference is striking the, the Love county timeline allowed me to focus my limited time at the courthouse on the most promising records and time periods, and I knew exactly where to look and when to look there. In contrast, my Kentucky timeline had broad date ranges and uncertainty about key migration details, making my research plan less targeted.

Diana (29m 51s):
Well, thanks for taking us through that. It’s so interesting to compare and contrast your two experiences. So we have talked all about the foundational steps, which are really important for preparation, which are to create that clear research objective and then to develop as thorough a timeline as possible. And so these give you that backbone for your successful onsite research. And in our next episode in this series, we’re going to continue with the next crucial steps, which will be conducting locality research, creating a research plan, and then that all important step of calling ahead to checkout the facility.

Diana (30m 32s):
And we’ll also have some more examples from Nicole’s two contrasting research experiences as well as give you practical tips for making your research trips as productive as possible. So we hope everybody will tune into the next episode and learn all about Onsite Research Trip Preparation Part two. So thanks everyone for listening, and we will talk to you next time.

Nicole (30m 57s):
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.