RLP 375: Preparing for Onsite Research – Part 2

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro, episode 375, Preparing for Onsite Research – Part 2. 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 well, and I just can’t wait to tell you this fun that I had over the weekend reading a diary from 1866.

Diana (1m 0s):
Okay, tell us the story. How did you even get that diary? This is so exciting.

Nicole (1m 5s):
I just got an email out of the blue from a cousin and it just had a PDF attached to it. So I opened it up and it was the diary of like my third great-grandmother’s sister-in-law, her brother’s wife. And it was from 1866 all the way up until the last entry of 1878. And it was mostly just from that one year 1866. And then she didn’t finish the year and then in like 12 years later after they had moved from Pennsylvania over to Kansas, she wrote about how they had moved and how it was really hard and they were living in a sod house and they had homemade furniture and they didn’t know where their next bite to eat would come from and just, it really highlighted the difficulties of living out in the plains in that time period.

Nicole (1m 58s):
But they had four kids and the first child that she had was born in 1866. So it was fun to read about that and every day she would say, doing poorly, not feeling well, did the washing and it took hours and it was so exhausting. And she had written a little verse on the outside of the diary about being a farmer’s wife and how it’s a lot of work and it was just such a, an interesting, sweet insight into life in the past. It was just fascinating to see the different types of phrases and words used and to just feel like this connection to a person who lived so long ago.

Nicole (2m 41s):
And I especially loved all the references to different family members that are in in my family. So this is on my dad’s side and it even has the birth of my second great-grandmother. When she was born, it was mentioned that Mary, the diarist, went over to visit Martha, my third great-grandmother, her sister-in-law, and saw the birth, you know, saw that she didn’t see the birth, but she went over after the birth and she saw the baby and the baby didn’t even have a name yet, but she just mentioned that the baby was doing well and the parents are very proud. And so it was just sweet and it was fun to see all, and then even Martha’s parents were mentioned, mother Sylvias and brother Jesse because I think he was a preacher or some kind of religious position.

Nicole (3m 30s):
So sometimes she referred to him as Father Jesse or Brother Jesse. I don’t know. It was fun. And she also had quite a bit of sass at times or just kind of an element of, my husband did this and I did not like it, or my husband made me cry tonight ’cause he blah blah blah. Or he was, he was gone at his parents all week and then he had to go there again today as if he hadn’t been there already all week. It’s just funny.

Diana (4m 2s):
Oh my word. I love that she was a real person.

Nicole (4m 7s):
Exactly. That’s why I couldn’t stop reading because

Diana (4m 10s):
so funny.

Nicole (4m 10s):
I wanted to see you like if she would ever say the reason why her husband made her cry or what it was. And then finally when she had the baby and she had a little baby at home and still had to do all the washing and the cooking and it was so much work, she put in her diary that she told her husband how hard it is to try to do any of the housework with the baby and him always gone and he was like, I don’t know why you need to tell me this. It was just so fun to picture it all and it was just so real. You know, all of us who’ve had little children have known how that feels.

Diana (4m 42s):
Yeah. And especially that when

Nicole (4m 43s):
Goes to work and you’re home with the kids.

Diana (4m 45s):
Yes. And especially your first baby. This was her first?

Nicole (4m 49s):
Yep.

Diana (4m 50s):
Yeah, it’s such a shock. You’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t go anywhere without this baby. What, what do I do?

Nicole (4m 57s):
And then you can just tell when she got even busier because the baby stopped just laying and sleeping in bed or crying and eating. I don’t know, for some people if it’s easier when they’re little, but when they’re newborn for me it’s a little easier because they just kind of sleep a lot. But then the baby was born in March and then by November she didn’t write anymore at all. She, ’cause it was like one of those annual diaries, So it had like the date already pre-written and like five lines. So there wasn’t much space. So it was just kind of like, okay, write, write a little bit about what happened today and then move on. Well the, from like November on it was blank. And then in December she scribbled out all the dates and wrote a longer entry about what life had been like in the last 12 years and how they had four kids and how they had moved to the Plains and how challenging that was.

Nicole (5m 45s):
So she definitely used her diary to write down about her challenges.

Diana (5m 50s):
Oh that is such a treasure. That’s amazing. And

Nicole (5m 54s):
It was, it was really fun. I especially appreciated the visits that she talked about. She visited with Martha a lot. So it was neat to see my ancestor featured in her journal.

Diana (6m 5s):
Well that’s a really good reason to seek out things like that. You know, we do teach that, look for your associates, you know, the FAN club, friends, associates, family, friends because your person might be mentioned in their diaries and their letters. It was so important for people to keep their connections intact. You know, they didn’t have cell phones, they didn’t have email. They actually had to go visit people and they wanted to go visit people, you know, I think they were isolated a lot and they wanted to get out and go visit. They couldn’t just run over to the grocery store and see people. And I had to make a concerted effort to go be around other people. So yeah,

Nicole (6m 41s):
She also wrote, wrote about writing letters to so-and-so and hoping for a letter from so-and-so and so-and-so’s going into town to see if there’s a letter. So it really did highlight a desire to be connected with each other even if they move away.

Diana (6m 59s):
Yeah. Absolutely. Oh that’s so neat. Well now you’re going to have to do some research on this person and learn more about her. Do you envision a research project coming up with about that?

Nicole (7m 13s):
Well this family’s been really well researched and I was looking on Family Search and one of the cousins who has access to the journal uploaded pictures of the journal to individuals who were mentioned in it and tagged them. So a lot of the things are already preserved there. But I did have the idea that it would be interesting to take the transcription of the whole diary and put it into AI and see what kind of, like, story could be written from that. Using as many quotes from it as possible, but then also making it flow more and just something fun to try and tell the story of her life.

Diana (7m 48s):
Oh, that’d be so fun. You’ll have to do that and put it in a blog post. That would be really fun.

Nicole (7m 55s):
Well, I’ll be teaching our next webinar in the Research Like a Pro Webinar Series on Saturday, September 20th at 11:00 AM Mountain Time. And this will be titled Migration and Motherhood: DNA Confirms Sally (Keaton) Reeves’ Family and Western Path. So I’m excited to talked about this project I’ve been working on all year and some of the topics that I will cover include: Migration Patterns, Southern Research, Estate Records, Census Analysis, Naming Patterns, Family Groups, Autosomal DNA, Geographic Analysis, Family Reconstruction, Cemetery Records, Newspapers, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

Nicole (8m 39s):
And I’ll just mention in the list, the cemetery records were fun because there was a Reeves Cemetery in Izard County, Arkansas where I got a lot of clues about who was related to who and kind of some indirect evidence of linking Sarah, Sally, Keaton Reeves to some of her potential children where there really wasn’t a lot of other evidence besides they’re buried in the same cemetery and that pre 1850 census analysis and correlation and then proximity. So it was challenging to kind of tie everyone together and to really pick out the pieces of evidence to use. But it was fun and I’m excited to talked about it some more.

Nicole (9m 24s):
The next Research Like a Pro with DNA study group is in February of 2026 and please let us know if you’d like to be a peer group leader. And then if you’re not part of our newsletter yet, that comes out every Monday. So you should join. We will hopefully see some of you at the virtual Texas State Genealogy Conference on November 7th and 8th. And I’ll be teaching two classes, one about tax records and another about AI and genealogy. And then mom is teaching about crafting focused narratives with small bites and uncovering female ancestry. So we’re looking forward to that.

Diana (10m 3s):
Alright, well let’s get to our topic which is continuing on discussing Preparing for Onsite Research. So in our last episode we talked about the foundational steps for preparation and those were first to create that clear research objective and then next to develop the thorough timeline of everything that You know. And so now we are going to continue with the remaining crucial steps that will help those onsite research trips be as productive as possible.

Nicole (10m 36s):
So as you know in the Research Like a Pro process, the next step is locality research. So in the timeline step, you hopefully identified the localities where your ancestor lived and once you’ve picked a location to really study, you can create a comprehensive locality guide for that location. And often you have multiple locations because of migrations and things, so you might need more than one locality guide. The guide should help you understand everything necessary for effective research, including locality formation dates and understanding when counties, towns or jurisdictions were established as well as previous jurisdictions and knowing which earlier jurisdictions governed the area.

Nicole (11m 21s):
And then of course the extant records discovering which records are still available and where they’re held. This is really important because you don’t wanna search in the wrong place and if, if the place your ancestor lived in was previously part of another jurisdiction, the records you need might be housed elsewhere. And that can be great if your county burned but bad if you don’t know that you need to look there. So that’s why we need to learn about the locality. You’ll also need to identify extant record collections and the repositories that hold them. And this is perhaps the most crucial information determining which records are available online, versus which records still exist, but remain undigitized.

Nicole (12m 4s):
And then if you think they’re out there somewhere, which repositories house these offline collections. And while this research can be challenging and creating your locality guide can be time consuming, you can often find the information you need by exploring various websites including the websites of the repositories that you think might have the have the collections. So let’s talk about my two research trips and the importance of thorough locality research.

Diana (12m 35s):
Alright, so let’s start with Love County Oklahoma Locality research, and this was the comprehensive approach. So for this project, Nicole had done thorough jurisdictional research and discovered some important historical context. And one of our sources was the NGS Guide to Research in Oklahoma. And she also used the Family Search Wiki, which provided specific repository information. So here’s the context: Love County was created in 1907 when Oklahoma became a state. And previously it was part of Chickasaw Nation Indian territory. Before statehood, the area was part of Pickens County within Chickasaw Nation.

Diana (13m 17s):
And Love County was much smaller than Pickens County. The county clerk held land records from 1904 on and the court clerk held marriage, divorce, probate, and court records. So this was really important to understand the jurisdictions because it helped Nicole understand that records before 1907 could be in Indian Territory collections under Chickasaw Nation and the land records from 1904 forward were held by the County Clerk’s Office of Love County. So it seems that some of the land records from 1904 to 1907 are now held by Love County even though it wasn’t created until 1907. And this was reflected in some of the deeds that were created in 1904, ’05, ’06, but not recorded until after 1907.

Diana (14m 5s):
So that is a good lesson to really expand your research a few years because you never know what you’re going to find. So as Nicole learned about Love County, she found the Family Search Wiki indicated the county clerk had those land records and that should include the deed she saw in the newspaper for January, 1914. So she emailed the county clerk to see if they’d find it for her, but they didn’t respond. And then she later realized this was probably because of an error in the newspaper’s land description of the Collin Harris deed. And as a follow up to the research trip, she emailed again asking for them to email her a deed she had missed and they sent it right away the next day.

Diana (14m 48s):
So maybe if you know they can’t find it right away, they’re not gonna send it to you.

Nicole (14m 54s):
Yeah, when I wondered like, why didn’t they ever respond, I was like, oh, probably ’cause they looked for it and didn’t find it and they didn’t know what else to do.

Diana (15m 4s):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the clerk also had probate records and emailing the court clerk was successful and they did conduct a probate search for Nicole before the trip, but they didn’t find any will or probate records in their index for John C. Harris in or after 1918. So she emailed them again to ask for his widow, Arza, which also came up empty. So we have to remember that courthouses don’t usually have an online catalog ’cause their main focus is present day business rather than archiving records of the past. However, counties usually do have a website with some limited information and the Love County website was well organized.

Diana (15m 48s):
It had separate office sections for the commissioner, the sheriff, the assessor, county clerk, treasurer, court clerk, and others. And each office had its own dedicated webpage with specific information. So that is awesome. Well, the county clerk page had detailed information about the clerk’s responsibilities and these included serving as Registrar of Deeds and custodian of records, maintaining the judgment docket for district court orders on real property, and keeping a list of fees for copying documents. And the page noted that the office undergoes annual state auditor checks and it provided an email address, though this was mostly unresponsive to multiple inquiries.

Diana (16m 34s):
So most exciting was the Search Land Records link on the website, which initially looked so promising. However, it only was for images from 1982 forward and Index Data. So they noted they were adding more historical records, but the ones she really needed from 1904 to 1918 were unavailable online. So you had to go in person to get those. So while preparation for Love County was pretty good for a visit there in person, Nicole could have been more prepared by thinking about which office could hold the tax records that she really wanted. She guessed they’d also be at the county clerk, which was incorrect.

Diana (17m 16s):
The treasurer’s office had them, and though she couldn’t be called ahead, she was fortunate to access the storage room, which was in the old jail by the courthouse when she arrived. So lesson Nicole learned through the courthouse visit was to call each office and find out what record types they had as well as ask about where the records might be stored. So if she’d done that, she could have accessed the storage room for the court clerk where she thinks she spied full volumes on her way to the treasurer’s storage room to see the tax volumes.

Nicole (17m 47s):
Yeah, you only can hope if you can access those old volumes that are hiding in storage. Well, in contrast, when I did the Hardin County Kentucky Locality research, I didn’t have much time. It was the last minute the night before, so it was a much more rushed approach And I didn’t really do anything thorough, but I did manage to do a little bit. So basically my approach to county identification was fragmented and kind of relying on limited data, just whatever I could see from trees. But that 1850 census did give some sort of a time timeframe.

Nicole (18m 28s):
The Ralston family, who were close associates and had intermarried with the Harris family, resided in Todd County, Kentucky, an area that appeared promising for further research. So I really considered exploring that county because at least I could have the Ralston surname kind of as a guiding star to help point to any Harris connections instead of being confused about who all these Harrises were. But after exploring this county, there were no John Harrises there in 1820, so it seemed probably like the wrong place. And online trees pointed to Hardin County as the potential birthplace for James B. Harris. And there was a John Harris on the 1820 census there.

Nicole (19m 9s):
So I thought it seemed more promising. I did some preliminary searches in the Family Search Full Text Search for Hardin County, and I found a few records pertaining to a John Harris there, which led me to focus the research there. And Full Text Search showed the following Hardin County records were digitized: tax, court orders, marriage bonds and deeds. So I knew that those sources would be online. So I kind of knew that I wouldn’t need to look at those at the Kentucky Department of Library and Archives because they were already online.

Nicole (19m 51s):
So next I moved on to reviewing the website and online catalog for Kentucky Department of Library and Archives, KDLA. And they had a page called Visiting the Archives on the ky.gov website. And this had a lot of helpful information about what you could and could not bring into the research room, which is always an important thing to discover. And at KDLA, you can bring only pencils, loose sheets of paper, laptops, cameras, phones, sweaters, and small wallets that fit inside your pocket. You can’t bring food, beverages, binders, pens, flash drives, coats, or any containers such as backpacks or purses.

Nicole (20m 35s):
So that was really helpful to know, you know, that bringing my laptop might be a good idea and my phone. While I was excited to view the KDLA catalog online, it was extensive and had a lot of entries. However, it did present some challenges as far as research planning. I noticed that the catalog entries were very broad with large date ranges such as 1786 to 1899, and a physical descriptions given in cubic feet, like 0.4 cubic feet or 1, 22 cubic feet. So this made it difficult to determine what specific materials were within these large collections that take up so many cubic feet.

Nicole (21m 18s):
22 cubic feet for example, represents an enormous amount of material. And it was unclear how to identify which specific books or documents to request. The catalog just didn’t provide enough detail for precise research planning. So had I understood the collections better, I would’ve known to start with the index volumes. And this is something I’m familiar with when using Family Search’s, digitized volumes, but less familiar with when visiting a repository in person. And so it can be hard to make a plan before you see what’s there and kinda know what you’re gonna have to work with. And just the catalog was very broad, So it didn’t list like in Family Search’s catalog, I love how it lists each volume and what’s in it, but it this one didn’t.

Nicole (22m 2s):
So for example, I was interested in the estate settlements from 1800 to 1902 by the Hardin County Clerk. And the notes for the catalog entry said these are recorded in will books A through C and in inventory appraisement and settlement settlement books D through Z and one through seven. And then another example is the county court papers 1786 to 1899 by Hardin County, Kentucky Circuit Court. The note on that catalog entry said these papers include information on the building or repair of public buildings, 1797 to 1831: orders, petitions, deeds, slavery records, physicians bills for the poor house practice, birth returns from 1875, claims for Revolutionary War service, and other materials.

Nicole (22m 50s):
So all of these details seemed really at a high level, so I wasn’t really sure how to get more specific information. As I went through the Hardin County records in the KDLA catalog, I attempted to check the records against what was already digitized and online at Family Search So that I wouldn’t be researching for records that were already available online. This tip was really important to me, because when researching at onsite research facilities, I wanna prioritize the records that aren’t available online so that I don’t have to look at something I can find later when I’m home. Reviewing the website and catalog were helpful, but I should have spent more time doing locality research and learning about records at KDLA and how KDLA works.

Nicole (23m 30s):
I later discovered additional resources that I should have watched, including a YouTube video titled, Researching at KDLA Overview of the Kentucky State Library and Archives, and KDLA research guides, including more detailed information about accessing original court records and so forth. I learned that Circuit Court records formed the bulk of their holdings and that digital name indexes were available only on site not accessible remotely. So if I would’ve known that, I could have added that to my research plan to use their onsite indexes to look up my names that I was looking for.

Nicole (24m 11s):
And I did eventually do that even though I hadn’t put it on my research plan, so that was fine. But it can be good to really understand your repository, especially a big one, like a state archives. Now 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.

Nicole (24m 55s):
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Nicole (25m 35s):
So you’ve done an objective timeline and locality guide, and at this point you should have a clear understanding of where extant record collections are housed and be ready to prioritize which records will be the most useful in answering your research question. Your research plan should include which type of records are available online, which records are only accessible on site like courthouses, libraries, or archives and specific repositories you will visit.

Diana (26m 3s):
All right, so let’s look at Nicole’s Love County research plan and the strategy there. And this one really shows how having done all the previous preparations steps came together into a focus strategy. So the primary priority were deed records, starting with that specific 1914 newspaper article that mentioned John C. Harris as grantee, which gave her a really good lead. And it had stated that a deed from Alan B. Collins and Ava Collins to John C. Harris for part six of seven south one east, which later was discovered to be seven south, one west.

Diana (26m 46s):
Oops, newspapers got it wrong, which is common, isn’t it? And then having specific grantor and grantee names along with the property location from the article was a really significant strategic advantage. And then that research timeline that Nicole had established through all of that extended family analysis was really crucial for focusing the search. So she determined that the Harris family arrived in Love county around 1895, which opened up the search period from 1895 to 1918 when John C Harris died. And she had used the birth locations of his daughter’s children to pinpoint this migration timing.

Diana (27m 29s):
So it was interesting that children born before 1895 were born in Texas while the first Harris grandson was born 1896 in Indian territory. And then the secondary goal was to find tax records and hoping that these would help assess John c Harris’s financial and property status during his time in Love County. So this research plan worked so well because it was built on solid preparation, had that clear objective, a precise timeline, and thorough locality research. So Nicole knew what she was looking for and had specific names and property descriptions and had established the exact time period to search,

Nicole (28m 11s):
Right. And I knew that I would just start with that deed and then go from there. And so that was kind of the, the main plan. It was a very short research plan, get it, go to the deeds and get as many deeds as I can about this family. But first getting that one and then just kind of like, what else can I get here? And so those tax records were one I hoped I could find. Well the Hardin County, Kentucky research plan for KDLA based on what I found in their catalog that wasn’t digitized at Family Search, included several different volumes. So there was one called Logan Todd and Christian County Turnpike Road Company Minute Book 1838 to 1847.

Nicole (28m 57s):
So that one was kind of later though, and it wasn’t really covering the right time period. You know, they had already moved to Missouri and then there was Hardin County Court papers from 1786 to 1899, and that was good. That was 0.4 cubic feet. There was also inventories appraisement and sale bills 1793 to 1899 that was part of Hardin County probate records. And that collection was six cubic feet. And then the last one was in a collection called Estate Settlements 1800 to 1902, and that was 22 cubic feet. So these were collections within Hardin County, Kentucky, and they were huge.

Nicole (29m 42s):
So I had them on my plan, but I really didn’t realize how broad the last two items were. You know, 22 cubic feet is 22 boxes. And to make this plan better, knowing what I know now, and having toured KDLA, I would add a preliminary step for reviewing index volumes at KDLA for the probate and estate records first and the court records, all the court cases so that I would know which files to order. And the tour of the KDLA Archives room on the third floor was such a special experience to see all the boxes and volumes there since this room is not open to the public. And we got that special tour because we were there with the NGS conference and they had the typical, like, one cubic foot tan boxes, like the look kinda like moving boxes, a small one.

Nicole (30m 29s):
And then they also had some even smaller gray boxes that are not one cubic foot, but that are more like small for holding file folders. So it was really neat being able to walk around up there. It would’ve been so much better to be able to order some of the records from the boxes and see, and there were some volumes even that were stacked outside of boxes, but we weren’t able to order any that day. But it was neat to see them all.

Diana (30m 56s):
It was, it was really fun to see how they’ve organized that archives and especially just to see behind the scenes and see how much material is back there. It’s just amazing. Well, I think you learned a lot. We all learned a lot from from that experience and from someday maybe we’ll have to go back to Kentucky and be prepared to really dive in and see what we can find about the family there.

Nicole (31m 21s):
Yeah.

Diana (31m 22s):
Well, In this episode we have covered those critical research and planning sets for onsite research preparation, the thorough locality research, and then creating a detailed research plan. And so these steps are going to build on the foundation that we discussed in part one, and we’ll help you focus your limited time at research facilities. So in our next episode of this series, we will cover the final and perhaps the most important step calling the facility ahead of time. And this step could make or break your research trip. So we’ll share some examples specifically of what to ask and why it’s so crucial for success.

Diana (32m 2s):
So thanks everyone for listening. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and it will help you as you’re getting ready to go on a trip. And we will talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Nicole (32m 15s):
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.