By Carol Cooke Darrow
Research is the gathering of data, information and facts to build knowledge of your family history. The word “research” is sometimes a stumbling block for people new to genealogy. Their goal in the beginning is to find their great-grandparents. They have been told by TV ads that they just have to look for a leaf and all will be revealed.
What is revealed are families with the same last name who may or may not be your actual ancestors – they may be people who are “sort of like” your ancestors. They have the same first and last names, such as David Wilson and his wife Susannah. I found eight such couples in the 1880 U.S. census, three born in Ohio, two born in South Carolina and two born in New York. Which one is yours?
You will have to look at more information to determine which couple you are related to. That is the reason you must start with yourself, your parents, and their parents, going backward. Perhaps your mother’s father was Richard Wilson and he appears in the 1910 census with his parents, David and Susannah Wilson, who were born in South Carolina but living in Indiana in 1910 with their children Manny, Hiram, John, Richard and William. David and Susannah have been married 31 years. Then you look at the 1900 census and see the same list of parents and children with perhaps a few more children added – Susan, Mary, and Elizabeth as well as Manny, Hiram, John, Richard and William – living in South Carolina.
You now have some “facts.” The census records appear to confirm that these two records report on the same couple and their family. Since they were married in about 1879, you would expect to find David and Susannah Wilson in the 1880 U.S. census in South Carolina. Now you’re doing research.
~ Carol Cooke Darrow, CG, is a member of the Colorado Genealogical Society.