What Makes Research Successful?

21 April 2014

Successful research is reliable research. It is not achieved by querying the Internet for names, by using indexes and databases as though they were actual records, or by accepting uncritically whatever conclusions others tout.

EE's QuickSheet The Historical Biographer's Guide to the Research Process teaches, step by step, four models to follow to achieve success when research focuses on *people*

  • The Research Process Model
  • The Research Analysis Model
  • The Identity Triangulation Model
  • The Reliability Model

It's a handy, laminated guide—just four leaves, but jam-packed with help for everyone with brickwall research problems. https://www.evidenceexplained.com/magento.

Blog Term

Submitted bykelbelle3201on Mon, 04/21/2014 - 11:52

The above is my idea for a Quicksheet. I just started researching my husbands family in the Southern United States. The family was Baptist and I have hit a brick wall prior to the 1850 United States Federal Census Records on most lines. Courthouses and Churches seemed to have all had fires that destroyed reocords. I have tried contacting State Archives, County Courthouses, Historical Societies, Genealogical  Societies, Cemeteries, etc. and can't seem to come up with any records for my husbands direct line. Of course, everyone on Ancestry.com has trees for the family back to England but none of them are sourced or provide any evidence connecting one Abraham R Gooch to his supposed parent's Henry Gooch & Nancy Riddlesperger. This is not the first time I've been stuck in the South so I thought it might be helpful to have a Quicksheet discussing alternative's to standard records in the Southern U.S. that can be found prior to the 1850 census for states such as Alabama, Mississippi, & Texas [as Texas was not a state prior to 1850 but someone told me there are Republic of Texas Census Records somewhere but can't remember where]. Just a thought.

Kelly Leary