There’s wealth in journals

By Nancy Battick

If you belong to a genealogical society, you likely will receive a subscription to their journal as part of your membership. They may also offer you an e-zine or newsletter as well, but the journal will contain articles written by genealogists about how they unraveled their own family puzzles.

I’ve heard many genealogists complain they feel disappointed with the journals they receive mainly because there never was an article about their families. They dismiss articles about other families or searches as uninteresting. But they shouldn’t. No journal, unless it’s a surname society, will always have articles about your own personal line. That is, unless you author an article. 

The truth is that while most journal articles won’t help you in your own ancestral search, they can offer you assistance. Reading articles submitted by other genealogists regarding their own research can help point the way for you in your own research. Consider these articles with solid advice and tips.

What can you learn? Let’s start with techniques. When we read someone else’s search process to unravel a mystery in their family lines it can point the way for us to follow the same pattern in our own research. The author(s) will usually explain the process they followed to find the answers they needed.

They will also detail their approach in assembling the materials they found and how they evaluated the evidence and information. These techniques are how genealogists can prove or disprove a family line. This can be valuable especially if you’re trying to break down a brick wall. Finding out how others achieved a breakthrough in their own family line can help you in your own efforts.

Articles can also point you toward resources you may not have considered. Did an author use a set of records you haven’t? It could very well be the records, you either didn’t know about or dismissed as not worth the time. But by reading how other researchers used records you may reconsider your dismissal. There are hundreds of thousands of potential resources they can aid a genealogist but often we tend to stick to our usual suspects:  census records, vital records, newspapers, and a few others. While all of these are invaluable, they may not be enough to aid you in your search especially if an ancestor came from a frontier area such as early Maine. Where there are no official records, we tend to hit a brick wall without realizing there may be other sources out there we haven’t considered.

You can also find information about physical repositories such as libraries or federal government resources you haven’t explored. 

The nice thing about journal articles is that they are always sourced. These sources, online, in published articles or books, or in archives may just be what you need.

So, please don’t just toss your journals without closely examining the articles. It may just be what you need to complete your research. It’s worth a try.

Columnist Nancy Battick of Dover-Foxcroft has researched genealogy for over 30 years. She is past president of the Maine Genealogical Society, author of several genealogical articles and co-transcribed the Vital Records of Dover-Foxcroft. Nancy holds an MA in History from UM. Reader emails are welcome at nbattick@roadrunner.com.