In genealogical research, you will inevitably end up with a lot of links. I must admit I’m a bit of a link hoarder. With anything else in life, I like to keep it simple. Put everything in its place and if I have no use for it, out it goes.
Links are too easy to collect, though, especially genealogy links. Heck, I even save links for sites I don’t actually need, but could need in the future.
Fortunately, I went in and cleaned my favorites recently. Good thing, too, because plenty of those links were broken. It just goes to show that when you find a link that is potentially useful, you need to try to mine it for nuggets as quickly as possible.
I like to organize links for ease of finding what I want, so my favorites are broken down in a folder called “Genealogy” into subfolders:
Conferences
Societies
Canada
Connecticut
DNA
England
France
General
Ireland
Italy
Loyalists
Maine
Massachusetts
New Brunswick
North Carolina
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island
Quebec
Scotland
Virginia
Washington
Before I cleaned out links, I had more folders – folders I ultimately realized I never used. So this is a very basic way of organizing links. I can find what I need quite easily. If I am working on my Mayflower ancestors, I know the Massachusetts folder will be my first stop to see what links I have available.
There are probably plenty of folks who don’t see the need to have these various subfolders for organizing links/favorites. If I didn’t do this, the Genealogy folder would be one, long, disorganized list of links that I would have to scroll up and down through.
One of my ex-husband’s family mysteries is right there on his paternal side – who are the ancestors of John Goodwin Hawksley?
Thanks to my visit to NEHGS several years ago, and not enough hours spent looking through the Isaac Adams manuscript file (there are never enough hours – it is like being a kid in a candy store!), I found this wonderful document:
This is a document written by John Goodwin Hawksley’s niece, Mary Elizabeth (Adams) Foster. She was the daughter of John’s sister, Margaret Elizabeth Hawksley, who married Isaac Adams (son of Isaac Adams and Rhoda Babcock).
The Adams family ended up in New Brunswick due to their Loyalist convictions, as did the Goodwin family – the ancestors on John’s maternal side.
John’s mother was Mary Goodwin. Her father was a Loyalist from New Jersey. We don’t know her parents’ first names; only that her father was, of course, a Goodwin and her mother was a Workman. We also know the names of Mary’s siblings, thanks to this letter.
The letter mostly gives clues, but not much concrete information. I began piecing the Goodwin family together in hopes that working sideways would yield more information. Fortunately, I “met” a Goodwin descendant online, and she and I have worked together to create a fuller family tree.
However, the Hawksley question remains. This letter says simply that Mary Goodwin married “an Englishman”.
I have guesses and ideas based on the area (Fredericton and St. John, New Brunswick) of why this Hawksley man might have been there. I think he was a British soldier, but I have no definite information. However, I also don’t think they were actually married, which is another hypothesis entirely.
I know that Mary Goodwin, after having her 4 children, was married to William Madigan on 14 October 1824, placing Mr. Hawksley’s date of death between 1816 (when the youngest child, Margaret was born) and 1824, or his return to England (or Ireland, in my hypothesis) in that time frame.
Thus far, death records have not given us the name of Mr. Hawksley (or the mother either – finding her was a lucky break based on my research at NEHGS and then connecting that to the 1860 census, in which Mary Madigan lives with her daughter, Margaret (Hawksley) Adams).
What’s next?
Certainly, there are plenty of possibilities open, and most of them point to actually visiting Fredericton, where the 4 Hawksley children were born, In addition to on-site research, I think obtaining the service file for the hypothesized father might also help. The person who is currently the basis for my hypothesis was stationed in Fredericton during the time frame that Mary had her children. No Hawksley male, prior to John Goodwin Hawksley, left any records – no birth, baptism, marriage, or death, no court or land or newspaper records – nothing. It’s not often that a male lives without leaving some kind of mark. So who was this elusive Mr. Hawksley?
Someday, I hope to know. For now, it’s this one document found in a manuscript collection that answered at least one important question. Never underestimate the importance of these collections in museums and historical societies!
You’ve probably heard of Civil War (and other military) Pension Files, but maybe you haven’t ordered one yet. They’re costly, perhaps out of reach for some people, which can make obtaining them difficult. However, if you are able to order one, they can be valuable sources of information. Here’s an example:
Samuel Hawksley was born about 1847 in Richmond, Carleton County, New Brunswick. He died 6 February 1865 at Hatcher’s Run in Virginia. Samuel never married or had children.
His parents, John Goodwin Hawksley and Lucy Lilley, filed for a pension for his Civil War service on 27 March 1877. Because Samuel was unmarried and without children, any documentation in the file should center around him – perhaps I would find his actual date of birth – and his parents.
At least, that’s what I surmised. John and Lucy would have to submit documentation proving they were his parents. Perhaps it would give me more clues regarding John’s background, since he was a brick wall. Perhaps not. As you know, you can leave no stone unturned when dealing with a brick wall. Because Samuel’s parents would have been the ones submitting information and documentation to obtain his pension, these are firsthand documents created by or for them.
The pension file was incredibly useful, because while it didn’t give me the names of John Goodwin Hawksley’s parents, it did verify the marriage date for him and his wife, Lucy Thomas Lilley, as well as the birth dates of their children. In a few instances, we only had approximations. It also verified the death of Lucy T. Hawksley and the marriage of their first daughter.
At the time when I received the file several years ago, nobody seemed to know who Isabel Hawksley, the eldest daughter and child of John and Lucy, had married. The file told me that her husband’s name was Charles Staples Boothby of Saco, Maine. They went to Newton, Massachusetts, which was good news for me, as I found the records of births and marriage on their children, as well as Isabel (Hawksley) Boothby’s death, via NEHGS.
Meanwhile, I learned other interesting information about John Goodwin Hawksley himself that gave me a better understanding of the family history.
He is my ex-husband’s 3rd great-grandfather. In September of 1861, a tree fell on his leg, breaking the leg below the knee and making him lame. He had to use a cane for the rest of his life, and was unable to work the family lands. They were too poor to get a doctor to set the leg, so it healed, but not well.
He relied on his unmarried teenaged son, Samuel, to do the work. Then Samuel enlisted with the Army in 1864, hoping to be able to send money to his family. But he was lost after going missing in action during the battle at Hatcher’s Run, Virginia.
When the family had not heard from him for 12 years, they filed for the pension in 1877 as dependent parents. Lucy died in 1880, so John then requested the pension be transferred to him, and it was paid until his death in 1893.
My ex-husband’s great-great grandpa, William Roger Hawksley, was “legally bound” to support his father from 1880 to March 1881, and the affidavits say that John and Lucy Hawksley survived thanks to their children’s generosity, and Samuel’s work on their home and lands, before he went to war at the age of 17.
So it was interesting stuff. While it didn’t give me anything further on Hawksley ancestors, it told more of the story of John Goodwin Hawksley’s and his family’s lives.
As the internet offers us more and more places to connect, it can be tricky to determine who you “ought” to follow on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms. There are many recommendations out there – some that are considered staples of social media/the online community in genealogy.
It’s well worth checking out the suggestions on “Top 100” lists and the like, but sometimes finding the right folks or blogs to follow on social media is as simple as a few search terms.
What do you want to get out of making these connections online? Do you want to find potential distant cousins and other people with similar research interests? Do you want to keep up to date on more general genealogical news or the latest scientific advances with DNA? Would you like to find people local to you or communicate with genealogists in other countries?
And, once you find these people, what next? What should you do with these connections? What is the point of a widespread network if you don’t make use of it, or participate in it?
Sometimes, it is nice to sit back and watch news, ideas, and more scroll by in your Twitter feed. But it won’t necessarily help break through that brick wall or bring you closer to uncovering what happened to an ancestor who apparently dropped off the face of the earth.
Take time to reach out to the people with shared research interests, or even who live in the area where your family resided decades or centuries ago. Before the internet, we sent each other letters – even long-distance relatives! Email makes it even easier to say, “Dear John Smith, I noticed your post on the Genealogy.com Smith forum, and I do believe we may have an ancestral connection via Robert Smith.”
We tend to be a friendly lot, so most of us will respond courteously – probably even excited to hear from you. So use that social media to be social and have some fun with it! You might make an unexpected discovery along the way. 🙂
I work with someone who asks me a LOT of questions about genealogy – how do I figure out this or that, how do I know how closely DNA matches are connected, and where do I find answers to particular questions? So I thought it might be a good time for a good old-fashioned “how to” post on the first steps to take if you would like to research your genealogy.
Here’s a little caveat: Genealogy is not just addictive, but contagious. The two questions people ask me most often are “Will you help me find…?” and “How do I start working on my own genealogy?” Once you start, your friends and family might want to get in on the fun.
First, I will give you the most essential piece of advice: write it down. All of it. This applies to everything you will do and everything you will encounter. Write it down. One day, you might ask yourself, “Wait – where did I get the information that great-great-grandpa smoked imported stogies and worked as a stone mason?” By writing down the publication or conversation with a family member, you’ll have your source. For example, this particular tidbit comes from the family history my great-great-aunt Espezzia dictated in 1991 with two of her sisters, including my Nana (great-grandmother).
Step 1: Gather Information
Your initial step should be to write down everything you already know about your family. Who is related to whom? Do you know where and when your parents were born? What about your grandparents and great-grandparents? Do you know where and when they died or were married?
Write down every single bit of knowledge you have on your family, even if it’s a note such as “Aunt Mary said Great-Grandma ran a dry goods store.” Your Aunt Mary might not remember the name of the store and she might give you a vague location, saying, “It was in Boston or Cambridge or somewhere around there…” But write it down nonetheless.
Step 2: Talk to Your Family
The next thing I urge people to do when they come to me for advice about how to research their family tree, is talk to family members. Begin visiting with or contacting those family members you are closest to, and start asking them questions. Keep in mind that parents or grandparents can forget things sometimes, which leaves us with more questions than answers. But that’s all right! Treat every tidbit of information as a clue. For now, you are gathering all the information you can. Verifying and building on it will come later.
In particular, I encourage you to speak to your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles, and cousins, especially older cousins in the same generations as your parents and grandparents. Don’t leave out anyone, unless you think they might treat your queries with hostility. I know my Nana’s (grandmother’s; yes, we call both of them Nana) first cousins have shared some very interesting information that my Nana or others did not recall, or share with me.
These older generations are precious. You may learn everything you need to know from one person, or you might get conflicting information from a few people that can help you narrow down some of your questions. I’ve had plenty of people come to me with family information that was incorrect, and that’s perfectly fine! The point of compiling this initial information is to confirm it, if possible.
To this day, I am most grateful to my great-great aunt, Espezzia, who took the time to share her story on tape and paper. The document everyone in our family now has is full of recollections by my great-grandmother and two of her sisters of their parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles, and their lives during their childhood. The sisters who worked on the family history were all nearly 90-years-old at the time, and the document itself is invaluable to their descendants.
Why did they do this? Had someone thought to ask Espezzia, her sisters, and brothers about their childhoods or their parents’ lives in Italy? I don’t know, but I’m so glad these women took the initiative to put their thoughts on paper for future generations.
Likewise, I’ve “interviewed” my Nana, my grandfather, my grandmother, cousins of theirs, my second cousins, an aunt, and my father. Genealogy is not just about adding names, dates, and places to a family tree. It’s akin to stepping back in time and putting yourself in your ancestors’ shoes. Talk to the older generations in your family now – don’t let the chance pass you by!
Step 3: Organizing the Information
Now that you’ve written down what you know about your family, and what they know, and what the people they know know… You get the idea. You should now have pages of notes. Perhaps it’s a single piece of lined paper with incomplete names and dates, and guesses as to places. Or maybe you have a smattering of emails from different relatives.
Paper genealogy is still where I feel most comfortable when it comes to collecting and organizing information. It makes life simpler to pull out a binder of charts or vital records for an “at a glance” look at things. Never underestimate the power of the basics. Most of us start out with these. I don’t know if any genealogists ever really phase them out of their work, even with all that family history software can do for us!
Now you need forms to organize your information into easy to read formats. You can Google the following forms and find PDF templates. I’m partial to the free forms available from Family Tree Magazine’s website at www.FamilyTreeMagazine.com. You are looking for the following forms:
Five-Generation Ancestor Chart aka Pedigree Chart
Family Group Sheet
The five-generation ancestor chart is your most basic form and probably similar to what you might envision when you think of what a family tree looks like. It lays out your ancestors starting with you as number one. Use yourself as the starting point on chart number one by filling in your name on the very first line on the chart. Your parents will be next, and then their parents, and so forth. The standard practice is to list the men on the top line and the women on the line below them.
These charts allow you to go back a few generations, recording names and dates and places of birth, marriage, and death. It doesn’t go in depth about the people’s lives. Instead, it gives an overview of yourself or the ancestor listed on the first line, parents, grandparents, and so on.
This chart will give you an at-a-glance view of your ancestry and make it easy to see the areas where more information is needed. I recommend filling in any uncertain information with pencil first. You can always erase it and use pen later when you confirm a name, date, or place.
When you get to the fifth generation, it’s time to begin a new chart starting with the last people on those sixteen lines on the right side of the page. You will assign each of those people a chart number, and then begin a new chart, i.e. chart 2 will start with person 17 on chart 1, chart 3 will start with person 18 on chart 1, and so on. Your chart will look something like this:
Pedigree Chart showing the ancestors of my great-great-aunt Espezzia.
Don’t worry if there are blanks in the chart. The point of genealogy is to fill those blanks and learn more about these people who – at this point – are probably just names and numbers to you. Soon you will know that Great-Grandpa Benjamin wasn’t just some man born January 1, 1900 in Dayton, Ohio. If you play your cards right, you’ll also learn he was a shoemaker with a penchant for wearing the same overalls every day and smoking a pipe, which his second wife absolutely despised but put up with anyway because she loved him so much.
You’ll notice, however, there’s no room to add such commentary to the five-generation ancestor chart. In fact, this form is only meant for direct ancestors, not collateral relatives. So it’s time to make use of the Family Group Sheet.
As you will see, this form has room to record much more information. Specifically, this allows you to write the names of a couple, their dates of life events (birth, marriage, and death), the names of their parents, and the names and life events of the couples’ children. Once completed, you will end up with something like this:
Family Group Sheet (page 1 of 3) showing my great-great grandparents and the first 4 of their 8 children.
This form allows you to expand on the information about a particular couple and their children, which is especially useful if you need to employ advanced research tactics such as sideways searching aka “the FAN Club” (something I will try to post about one of these days).
A couple other forms you may want to have on hand are:
Correspondence Log – handy for tracking emails and letters you write in your search for information.
Research Worksheet or Journal – useful for tracking the sources you’ve already checked for a specific ancestor
Research Calendar – a good way to track the dates of visits you’ve made to various locations for your research
Research Checklist – a comprehensive listing of resources that you can check off as you view them for a specific ancestor
These forms are also available at Family Tree Magazine’s website or via a Google search.
This is the first step to organizing your information and research efforts into a logical format. However, don’t throw out your initial notes, particularly if there were questionable names, dates, and places! Either save or scan your notes. If they are handwritten, you may choose to transcribe them and print a copy.
I will try to post about genealogy software available and digitizing all of this. But I suggest keeping everything you’ve gathered together in one place, even if you ultimately scan and digitize it in some way. You may find that everything fits in a large manila envelope or folder at this point if you’re just starting. Don’t worry – when it’s time to outgrow that initial storage, there are many different systems for organizing your information.
Step 4: The Fun Stuff – Research!
Armed with knowledge and ready to learn more, you click to open your internet browser, and type the word “genealogy” in a search engine. Various results pop up and you select the most popular of them all – a behemoth of a genealogy site you’ve seen advertising during episodes of “Who Do You Think You Are” that, for a price, will give you access to everything you could ever want – censuses, vital records, books, and more!
Hold it right there. Back away from the keyboard.
As eager as you are to begin your journey, let’s talk about genealogy as a big business. There are the sites that offer a complete history of your surname, along with a lovely coat of arms to display on your wall. I hope by now, most people have learned those sites are nothing but public information brokers, and won’t give you anything of value.
Then there are the sites that do offer legitimate information for a subscription. I’m here to say put the credit card down and take a look at these gems before paying big bucks for access to genealogical records:
These are the initial sites to which I refer new researchers because they’re free and offer a wealth of information. I also like to suggest going to the state or regional genealogical society pertinent to your family history (for me, it’s the New England Historic Genealogical Society) and seeing what they have available if you become a member.
That’s not to say you won’t get good value for your dollar with any of the subscription sites. However, you will find censuses, vital records, military records, immigration records, and more at FamilySearch. And, if you are so inclined, you can give back as a volunteer in the future by transcribing records for them.
Finally, a warning: don’t copy every family tree you see online. It’s tempting, sure, but treat those family trees as hints and then verify information before adding it to your own!
Of course, there is so much more to learn about genealogy. These are just simple first steps to get anyone started tracing their genealogy or learning about their family history. As you go forward from here, there are many different directions and layers to this endeavor, and a different path for everyone. 🙂
This year, I’ve decided it’s time to be more specific about exploring my brick wall ancestors, as well as those who aren’t brick walls, but leave me with questions. Sometimes, it’s easy to mix up the two. What we think is a brick wall might actually be a research question, one that’s easily answered if we focus on it.
A brick wall is a place where you are at a standstill. You have unanswered questions and until you get those answers, can’t move any further back to previous generations. A research question can apply to both brick walls and ancestors for whom you’ve learned a lot, but might need confirmation of certain facts.
In the interest of putting some “cousin bait” out there, here is my list of brick walls and research questions for 2020:
Paternal
7th Generation: John Wood (circa 1800 – aft 1871) & Ann Siddall (circa 1810 – aft 1871), Marple to Ancoats and Chapel-en-le-Frith to Ancoats, England – Brick Wall
7th Generation: William Gray (circa 1815 – bet 1891-1901) & Ann Jane Mason (1815 – aft 1901), Ireland to Stockport to Ancoats and Woolrich to Stockport to Ancoats – Brick Wall
5th Generation: Emma Anna Wallace/Murphy (1861-1945) & Unknown Reagan, Guysborough, NS to Middleborough, MA – Research Question: Who was her first husband? When were they married? How did their marriage end (death or divorce)?
6th Generation: Francis Wallace (unk – aft 1867) & Elizabeth Murphy (1838 – aft 1861), Port Mulgrave, NS and Guysborough, NS – Brick Wall and Research Question: Did either of them every marry? If so, whom? Did they have other children? When did Francis and Elizabeth, and their potential spouses, die?
7th Generation: John Patrick Murphy (abt 1793 – 1873) & Mary Ann (Fraser) Lowery (abt 1806 – 1882), County Wexford, Ire to Guysborough, NS and Guysborough, NS – Brick Wall
8th Generation: Esther Unknown, wife of Edward Curtis (circa 1747 – 1840), Dudley, MA – Brick Wall and Research Question: What is her maiden name? DNA potentially points to Burrell or Short. Also mtDNA ancestor of Dad/paternal aunt. Willing to test their mtDNA?
Maternal
6th Generation: Giovanni Feola & Teresa Sofia, Campora, Italy – Brick Wall, not yet explored.
8th Generation: Elizabeth, wife of William Parks & Mr. Johnston (circa 1795 – bet 1881-1890), Halifax, NS – Brick Wall and Research Question: What is her maiden name? What was her second husband’s name? When did she die? DNA potentially points to Johnston as a maiden name, as well.
8th Generation: Levi Benson (circa 1765 – 1815), Wareham, MA – Research Question: Were his parents Elisha Benson (1731-1813) and Sarah Steward (1732-1790)? Prove his paternity using Vermont probate record found for Elisha. Need to view at FHL or affiliate library.
6th Generation: Michele Galfre (1836 – unknown) & Francesca Manassero (1839 to unknown), Spinetta Italy – Research Question: Where were they born, married, and died?
6th Generation: Giuseppe Bergamasco (abt 1837 – 1941), Cairo Montenotte to Moneglia, Italy – Research Question: When was Guiseppe born? Continue trying to decipher the handwriting on his birth record from the Allegati. When did he die? Possibly in or after 1941, supposedly 104 at the time of his death. No death record for him in Moneglia up to 1941. Died after 1941 or elsewhere?
7th Generation: Antonio Bergamasco & Maddalena Bozzolasco, Cairo Montenotte, Italy – Brick Wall (one of the witnesses to their son, Giuseppe’s, birth was Joseph Bozzolasco, perhaps a relative?)
7th Generation – Tomaso Pedemonte & Angela Giusto, Cogoleto, Italy – Brick Wall. Angela is the farthest back I can go on my mtDNA line thus far.
I'm just a college-town New Englander living in small town Nebraska. I'm also a Hedge Witch, writer, genealogist, gamer, cross-stitcher, feminist, poly/pan, and wielder of rainbow d20s.
