Never ignore childless siblings!

One of my immigrant ancestors had six children between 1795 and 1815, one of whom apparently died young. Two of the six were daughters who married but had no children. Their husbands both left wills.

One husband's will left everything to his wife if she survived him. If she did not, he divided his estate in half -- one half to be divided among his surviving siblings, and the other half to be divided among his wife's siblings . . . He named them all, including the one we thought had died as a baby, with her married name. Both had common names, there was no other way to find her.

When I started reading his will, I thought, well, this is pretty far out on a limb. But in genealogy, "out on a limb" is a wise place to be.

Tracking Revolutionary War Pension Payments

I've heard top genealogists complain that we spend far more time learning where records are than what to do with them once we find them. NARA archivist Claire Prechtel-Kluskens does her darndest to right the balance with a blockbuster article in the Winter 2008 issue of Prologue, "Follow the Money: Tracking Revolutionary War Army Pension Payments." She writes,

Pension files of Revolutionary War veterans and their widows are well known as excellent genealogical and historical research sources. Few researchers, however, venture beyond the pension file to follow the "money trail" of records documenting the actual pension payments. . . .

Researching the records relating to pension payments is time consuming and involves understanding and using arcane, obscure, and unindexed records. It is not surprising, therefore, that no guide to this research has ever been published. This article attempts to fill this gap by going step-by-step through the research process . . . .

And what a gap it is. She leads the reader through a dozen or more record groups, following her example couple, Massachusetts patriot William McCullar and wife Chloe, through the decades to Chloe's probable death in the early 1840s in Licking County, Ohio. If you aspire to squeeze every ounce of information out of these records, print this one out and study it.

Central Illinois research as it happens

Editors tend to resist publishing articles that provide a "research travelogue" -- "first I looked here, and then that led me to..." but for those of us still struggling to figure out how to do good research, a travelogue or two is most welcome. National Genealogical Society president Jan Alpert provides one involving the Neill families, possibly related, of Peoria and Schuyler counties, Illinois in the January issue of UpFront with NGS. There's no magical revelation or clear conclusion, but I find it interesting to see how someone else goes about a project starting with a clue or two from a Civil War pension file.

"Contrary Mary"

New blogger and veteran professional, Kansas genealogist Mary Clement Douglass, CG, offers what has to be the world's simplest format for a research plan at Notes That Matter.

Believe it or not, my wife has been telling me this for years

Michael John Neill at rootdig.com:

with the advent of searchable databases, most genealogists are not coming anywhere close to tracking what they search for in a specific database or on a given website. ...

I've seen articles where it has been said someone cannot be found in a census. I rarely see where the specific unsuccessful searches are listed out in an attempt to defend the "can't find them statement."

Read the whole thing. Remember, the dog that didn't bark in the night-time was evidence in Sherlock Holmes' day, and it still is.

Help from upstream

Lots of Midwesterners have lines going back to upstate New York (which, geographically speaking, is most of it). If you're working in that area, don't miss the long, detailed, and extremely helpful new post on finding vital records there at Upstate New York Genealogy Blog.

(Extremely short version: start yesterday.)