Genealogy Research Goals

One of the greatest things about genealogy as a hobby is that you can easily keep busy for years trying to refine and extend your family history. But to prevent your hair from turning prematurely gray, you will probably want to have a few goals when you start:

(1) Temporal Terminus
With the first goal, you need to be able to know when to stop looking (really!). Sometimes, the records will solve that dilemna for you (many countries didn't keep comprehensive registers, others were destroyed during centuries of warfare). But are you trying to identify every ancestor? I recommend you seriously consider narrowing the search to one surname or "side of the family." You can always come back to a different search later.

(2) Standard of "Proof"
I could write about this goal for hours - and it would bore you. It may sound crass, but short of digging up an ancestor (and getting an autopsy), you can never be absolutely sure of anything. Information that is available (on the Internet, especially, but also in church records and state archives) is only as good as the honesty or memory of the person who reported it to the authorities. On top of that, the spelling skill of the person who recorded it, the quality of the surviving record (and integrity of the information if it was copied or transcribed from handwriting to typewriting) and the reliability of your own eyesight or note-taking ability can factor in level of certainty. So, you may never be able to "prove" anything at all. But you can probably trust evidence-supported assumptions and make educated guesses.

(3) Experience your Roots
If you are lucky enough to have an ancestor who knew the exact origins of the family, that may provide you an opportunity to (at least) find the ethnic and cultural source of your roots. I've been able to visit a few places where my family used to live (so far: an old farm town in Nebraska and ancestral locations in Canada and Italy). These trips were very meaningful - more than any piece of information I ever found in a library. My wife and I (and even my kids) ate the food, spoke with the people, wandered the streets and even attended the awe-inspiring churches of my ancestors. All of this was possible because my grandmother and my aunts and uncles remembered family addresses. But I've also got a few dead-ends (one is the elusive location of my great-great-grandfather's birthplace in Sweden). Cryptic details (e.g., "they lived somewhere in Germany", "he came over on the Mayflower", "we're related to royalty") can be frustrating - but getting to the bottom of those stories can lead you to very rewarding tales of your own.

(4) Preservation and Production
Keep records of every contradictory date, conflicting storyline and memory fragment. Someday, you may be the only one who ever heard any of the information. One thing you should definitely consider - making your research work available to others in the family. You can create an online family tree or use family tree software to generate web pages that you can post on your own server. Better yet, you could even prepare a written document (e.g., book). With the prevalence of copy services today, you don't even have to spend a lot to preserve your findings for posterity. If you take the extra step of donating your work to an educational institution or library, future researchers can enjoy the benefits of your product for many years to come.

Remember, all research (both online and offline) should be an adventure! "Brick walls" are only reminders of the adage "if genealogy was an easy hobby, it wouldn't be fun." Happy hunting!