My Trails into the Past

Sometimes our genealogy database is not completely clean and tidy. I might know a fact’s date down to the minute. I might not know the exact place an event took place. Different records that name our ancestors might give us different answers to a research question. So, what do we do? Enter all the different dates into our database? Pick the best one and ignore the rest? This is where following the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) helps us answer this. [1] For a reminder, the GPS asks us to first do reasonably exhaustive research, while recording source citations for each item we find. We also must analyze each document and the information we find in the document to understand the source of the information. If we get conflicting information, and that is common when we find different dates for an event, we work at resolving the conflict, hoping to get close to the correct answer. And lastly, we write up our conclusions and share them. [2] When we have multiple information pieces tha...

I have been working with tax records in Beaver County for my husband’s Gorrell family. The tax records for the family range from 1804 through 1840 across two or three different townships. Some years there are one or two entries, other years three or four. I recorded the entries by year and included the census entries from 1800 to 1840. These are census records with only the head of household and tick marks for the other members by age and sex. I also included some of my own comments and source citations. I ended up with 9 pages. The work I’m doing is to find the family of Amos Gorrell (1804-1890). Here is an example of what I created: 1800 South Beaver Township census . The only townships at this time were First Moon, Hanover, North Beaver, Second Moon, Sewickley, and South Beaver. The Gorrells were enumerated in South Beaver Township. Two men were enumerated next to each other. One James is older than the other, also indicated by the senior and junior appendages to their name. It ...