What Are Friends, Associates, and Neighbors For?

A friend emailed the other day, wondering what to do with his list of names of nearby people in the census. Genealogically speaking, what are these neighbors for?

(1) They can resolve questions of identity. I have used neighbors to help establish that a common-name man in two different places was the same person.

(2) They may actually be relatives, such as in-laws.

(3) They may have come from the same previous place as the research target, but have better evidence for it.

(4) They may be the ultimate desirable neighbor: one who was affluent, talkative, gossipy, and verbose, and who left papers and diaries now held in an archive.

(Can you name more?)

But as another friend says, many people who were nearby are just nearby. "You have to kiss a lot of frogs to get one prince."

For a top-notch free tutorial on using friends, associates, and neighbors, visit Elizabeth Shown Mills's Historic Pathways web site. Scroll about halfway down the page for seven pertinent articles.


Harold Henderson, "What Are Friends, Associates, and Neighbors For?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Top Genealogists on the Web

Just in case you missed the memos, it's now easier than ever to get a good genealogical education while spending no money, or very little. Four good free sites to start, the first two just recently opened:

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Historic Pathways: a collection of published articles on difficult genealogical questions.

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: excerpts and lessons from the classic reference on citation and evidence analysis (2nd edition), plus a store and discussion forums.

Craig Scott, Stump Craig (blog): Q&A Format, and yes, he has been stumped on occasion.

Board for the Certification of Genealogists, in particular the examples.

Feel free to discuss additions to this list in the comments.

Historic Pathways

If you know anything about Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, you don't need me to tell you that her new web site, Historic Pathways, is a treasure chest of the best in genealogy writing and reasoning. It includes links to valued sites and to her many books, but for aspiring practitioners the real meat is in 40 previously published articles and reports, most heretofore unavailable on line. That's my count, and it doesn't include a couple of titles promised but not yet posted. The articles and reports are organized by topic, so some are mentioned several times.

You may recognize some characters from one or more of her lectures, including the article ("In Search of 'Mr. Ball': An Exercise in Finding Fathers" with Sharon Brown Sholars, CG) from which sprang the inimitably titled lecture "Margaret's Baby's Father and What He Taught Me."

[Elizabeth Shown Mills and Sharon Sholars Brown, “In Search of ‘Mr. Ball’: An Exercise in Finding Fathers,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 80 (June 1992): 115–33; digital image at Elizabeth Shown Mills, Historic Pathways (http://www.HistoricPathways.com : accessed 20 January 2012)]

The Association of Professional Genealogists held an experimental on-line Live Meeting this past week about various educational opportunities. We focused on structured opportunities, some expensive, some low-cost.

We didn't get around to totally free opportunities like this -- and there is nothing like this on the web. If you're short of cash and travel time, and if you're tired of the much-recycled and dubiously sourced material that is easy to find on line, then read and reread these articles until you can give an elevator-pitch summary of each and follow the subtleties of the reasoning. You won't get a certificate or a credential, but you will see the genealogy world with new eyes.