Heartland Genealogy

Do you remember learning about the scientific method in high school—or perhaps even earlier? Have you ever considered how closely the process of genealogy research can resemble the scientific method? Most genealogy researchers will tell you to begin with a question. From there, genealogists may use different terminology, but I often find myself mentally following the familiar steps of the scientific method: Question Hypothesis — a proposed answer to the question Test the hypothesis Collect data Evaluate the data Draw a conclusion Translated into genealogy, those steps might look something like this: Question: Who are the parents of _____? Hypothesis: Preliminary research suggests that X may be the son or daughter of Y. Research/Test: Locate records for Y, X, and their relatives while documenting the research. Collect Data: Gather census records, land records, probate records, DNA matches, family trees, and other evidence. Evaluate: Does the accumulated evidence support or contrad...

Have you ever unlinked a child from parents in your family tree? If so, did you stop to consider all the different places where that relationship—and your reason for changing it—might need to be updated? Recently, I made the difficult decision to unlink my second great-grandfather, Albert Hutchinson , from the parents I had long assigned to him: Aaron Hutchinson and Sarah Merry . Why I Questioned the Relationship My recent research into the descendants of Aaron and Hannah Hutchinson , combined with a closer look at my autosomal DNA matches, has caused me to question whether Albert was actually their grandson. The problem is fairly simple: I have not found evidence directly connecting my Albert Hutchinson of Iowa to the Hutchinson family of Livingston County, New York. I do have records stating that Albert was born in Fulton County, New York . That location does not prove he wasn't related to the Livingston County family, but it adds to my concerns about a relationship that was alre...

As discussed in my recent post, Duplicate or Different , I followed up on a 'notice of change' message to discover two Eliza Van Valkenbergs on Family Search. By looking at the differences between the two women, I discovered some clues that led to more information in Eliza. One of those clues was the differing death dates for Eliza. In one case, the death date was given as between 1920 and 1930. I'm sure this was due to not finding Eliza in records. The other Eliza had a death date of 1943 listed. Knowing that Eliza had been married several times, I suspected that a different surname was contributing to the difficulty in finding records. When I searched Newspapers.com for the term Eliza in 1943 in St. Joseph, Missouri, I found a notice of her death.