Genealogical Research

My blog plans for this week have gone far astray. I’m not sure how (although it might have something to do with three unplanned out-of-town trips in one week), only that I fully intended to post Tombstone Tuesday and Wordful Wednesday posts on those two days this week, but it just hasn’t worked out that way. And judging from the way this week is going, the plans I’d made for other posts this week will not see fruition either. So, rather than becoming overly philosophical about the “best laid plans of mice and men”, here instead is a list of the genealogically-related books I’m reading right now. These are all books I’ve ordered through InterLibrary Loan (ILL):

• Courthouse Research for Family Historians by Christine Rose. I’ve really enjoyed several aspects of this book, namely Rose’s discussions of the way land was laid out in Federal Land States (as opposed to State Land States, which are the only ones I’ve researched in to date) and the various types of indexes used in courthouse record books.
• The Family Tree Guide to Finding Your Ellis Island Ancestors and A Genealogist’s Guide to Discovering Your Immigrant and Ethnic Ancestors by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack. I’m actually finished reading through these, but am holding them so that I can write down several source suggestions on researching Irish immigrants to the United States.
• Genealogical Evidence: A Guide to the Standard of Proof Relating to Pedigrees, Ancestry, Heirship, and Family History by Noel C. Stevenson. I’ve read this standard in the field of genealogical research before, but it was such a heavy read (and the information included within it so important), that I thought I’d give it another go. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is seriously interested in researching their ancestry.
• Abstracts of Wills Recorded 1752 Through 1800 in Orange County, North Carolina, Will Books A B and C, plus 20 Pages in Book D and 202 Early Marriages Not Shown in the Orange County Marriage Bonds compiled by Ruth Herndon Shields (Clearfield Company, Inc., 1991). I was curious as to whether a possible Drake ancestor had left a will in Orange County, hence this book. I could not find one, so my next step (yes, you knew that was coming) is to search the will books themselves. But I’m not quite ready to go all the way across NC to do that right now, so I’m simply reading it and wondering if any of the other families mentioned are related to my own.
• Georgia Bible Records by Jeanette Holland Austin. This is a handy little book (ok, not so little) for anyone having ancestors who lived in Georgia. The one downside is that almost no specific sources are given for the records, just a general nod to various repositories, and sometimes to individuals.

And, per usual, I have the stacks of books from my personal collection that I’m using in current projects as base references (right now, Sketches of Rabun County History by Andrew Jackson Ritchie, and Rabun County, Georgia and Its People, Vol. I by the local heritage committee), but I also have the newest additions to my genealogy library set out: Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian by Elizabeth Shown Mills, The Family Tree Problem Solver: Proven Methods for Scaling the Inevitable Brick Wall by Marsha Hoffman Rising, and Genealogical Proof Standard: Building a Solid Case by Christine Rose. The first two books I’ve read front to back many times over, and so knew exactly what to expect from them. The third I wanted as an at-hand reference on using the GPS; however, I’ve found it to be overly simplistic in its treatment of the subject, and wish now that I had purchased the BCG Genealogical Standards Manual instead (although, it is on my list for a future purchase). But that’s ok! I still learned something from that book, and so it was money well-spent.

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