How to report on nothing

How do we tell somebody we looked and didn't find anything?

Very thoroughly -- more thoroughly even than if we had found something.

Compare these reports:

(1) "I went to the courthouse and I couldn't find any of my ancestors."

(2) "I went to the courthouse and I couldn't find any Packmans."

(3) "I went to the recorder's office and I couldn't find any Packmans."

(4) "I looked for Packmans in the grantor and grantee indexes from the beginning of the county up to 1850, and didn't find any. I didn't have time to check the mortgagee and mortgagor indexes."

Whether we're reporting to our future self, or to a friend or client, only something as specific as #4 is acceptable. Why? Common sense and courtesy. (You can invoke the standards of the field, but in this case you can reach the same conclusion on more basic grounds.) If someone doesn't believe us, how can they check up on 1 or 2 or 3? If later on we can't remember what we did and didn't do in the recorder's office -- only that the place was airy and well-designed and not flooded with oil and gas men -- then we will speak ill of our former selves and have to do the work over again. The same applies, in spades, to research on the internet.




Photo credit: Caitlinator's photostream on flickr.com, http://www.flickr.com/photos/caitlinator/3633244665, per Creative Commons.

Harold Henderson, "How to report on nothing," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 20 September 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

A thought on what we publish and what we don't

Actually, it's a joke with a thought-provoking punchline. Those who will be offended by a little profanity should not click on this link to Crooked Timber, one of my favorite non-genealogy blogs.

Methodology Monday in Philadelphia

This month the article study groups of transitional genealogists (mailing list archives here) are reading and discussing an article from the December 2004 National Genealogical Society Quarterly by Kathryn C. Torpey, CG: "Assembling and Correlating Indirect Evidence to Identify the Father of Susan Kennedy (1815-59) of Philadelphia." (The issue is available free in PDF format to NGS members. Aren't you one yet?)

One rule about all these articles is that rereading them pays off, and sometimes rerereading too. The writing is packed. A single sentence may stand in for months of frustrating work, such as this one from page 258: "Extensive research in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chester County, Pennsylvania sources -- church registers, Bible transcriptions, military records, pension files, tax lists, deeds, wills, estate papers, and orphans' court records -- has turned up no direct evidence that Robert Kennedy was her father."

The only direct evidence (that is, evidence that says straight out who her father was) came from family tradition and from an unsourced family history from 1906. She was able to find various bits of evidence that confirmed various elements of family tradition, among them a newspaper marriage announcement of Robert's 1811 marriage, a city directory entry calling him a carpenter, and -- most importantly -- an 1841 city directory entry locating Robert's mother Margaret either in or next to the household of Peter Devlin and Susan (Kennedy) Devlin. Of such gossamer threads are proofs woven.