Tools of a Historical Investigator

I‘ve found, as an amateur genealogist and family historian, that researching ancestral roots and capturing stories to bring life to mere facts requires many competencies and skillsets. A family historian must wear many hats, including that of a: genealogist, historian, reporter, researcher and archivist. In that way, I liken my efforts for discovering the past to a Historical Investigator. As a Historical Investigator, I’ll need to conduct many activities in parallel: interviewing living relatives to establish a baseline of knowledge of our family history, searching for ancestors, validating their connections to my tree, documenting and archiving family artifacts (photos, heirlooms, antiques), finding historical context for my findings and finally, figuring out a way to write about my discoveries in a cohesive manner. The internet ushered in a new era in access to information, making genealogical research much easier than what our grandparents endured in their quest to learn about their past. Even so, the wealth of information at our finger tips makes the verification of the data we find, difficult.

 When I began researching my genealogy a couple of years ago, I started as many do with existing family genealogy information and once I exhausted this source, I signed up for an Ancestry.com account with their introductory subscription and subscribed to Newspapers.com for secondary resources. I spent the next six months “playing the ancestry.com game”, building my tree with updates to verified family sources and then adding some dubious ancestral links based on ancestry hints. Over time, I culled most of the suspect ancestral links and found some interesting connections and secondary sources through newspapers.com. I also ordered a DNA kit and my DNA results further supplemented my findings. To add some creativity to the project, I started keeping a bullet journal to document my research and tried to engage with family members by creating a private Facebook group where I shared my information. Then, my subscriptions ended and I found the cost of maintaining active ancestry.com and newspapers.com accounts too pricey, so I took a hiatus from my genealogy research. With the lack of incoming data from the non-active ancestry.com and newspaper.com accounts, my genealogical research became a lower priority and ultimately came to a halt. At the same time, my private family Facebook group turned into a one-person show and sadly, did not bear fruit as a knowledge sharing platform…so, I soon stopped updating that page too.

Then, about three months ago I decided to revisit my research, due in part to some health news that affected one of my parents while also considering the project as a vehicle to perhaps connect with my estranged children, and for the sake of passing the family history mantel to future generations…a sense of urgency revitalized me. This time, when resurrecting my family history project, I decided I wanted control over the technologies I used in my research and opted to go away from subscription models. So, instead, I invested in the following technologies:

• Desktop Software: RootsMagic – I use RootsMagic as my golden source for genealogy research. I try to update this once a week – searching for genealogy tree hints and adding facts and connections as time allows. In addition to getting the RootsMagic desktop software, I also purchased a couple of their companion software programs: Personal Historian (as a word processor for drafting my eventual Family History book), and Charting Companion (to supplement my findings with illustrative charts and graphs).
• Web Application: The Next Generation of Genealogy Site Building or TNG for short. I use TNG as my online ancestry research platform, aimed at sharing my findings with distant cousins who might provide insights into the various family lines I’m researching. For the sake of privacy, I provide access to immediate family members only. However, if you feel you have a genealogy tree that intersects with one the families I’m researching, and you think we could mutually benefit from sharing information, please email me at: info@roots-and-leaves.com.
• WordPress Blogging Platform: I primarily use roots-and-leaves.com as my research platform for family history. The purpose of this website is to document my ideas, investigate historical perspectives, and paint a nuanced picture of the life and times of my ancestors.
• Photo Scanner: One of my long term projects will be to digitize the thousands of photos my family currently has in 35mm slide and printed photo format. This project will be a slow burning one, and at this rate I don’t anticipate completing it for a couple of years at least.
• Interview Recording Device: I bought an interview recording device a couple of years ago with the aim of conducting personal family interviews. So far, I’ve interviewed only my mother. Redacting the audio recording into the written form is tedious. However, I recognize the importance of oral history projects, so, I will refocus on this project with interviews in the coming months.
• Website Resources: I’ve found some fantastic online resources…not just ancestry and genealogy resources, but, also illustrative datasets. I’ll create a “Resources” page in the near future to list important sources I’ve found.

Having control of the technology gave me a renewed sense of ownership over the research process and hopefully will empower me to stick with the project for the long haul. In future posts, I’ll delve into each of the technologies, tools and resources I mentioned above and provide status updates on my projects, as I go deeper into the past as a Historical Investigator.

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