My Trails into the Past

We never can really know our ancestors. We locate documents that suggest what they did or not do, where they lived, and who their families were. However, we do not know what they thought, what kind of personality they had, and what their goals were. Sometimes we do find records that hint to a personality. My 2x-great-grandfather, Vincent Sievert, was one of my German-speaking immigrant ancestors, who came in 1852 with his family from a part of present-day Poland where Germans had settled. [1] He first started out in Will County, Illinois, as a farmer, [2] but later worked as a stonecutter. [3] He and his wife, Susanna, had eleven children, eight whom grew to adulthood. [4] Domestic Goose JJ Harrison , CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Assault Charge I was surprised to discover from a newspaper article that Vincent was charged in the County Court with assault with a deathly weapon. [5] Oh, my, what had he done? The next month he was arraigned and he plead not guilty. [6] ...

For several years, I have been giving a presentation on how to do focused research. I use William C. Gleeson’s obituary as a starting point. First, create a research question and then make a research plan. This presentation is interactive and I have the audience participate by reading the obituary to discover something they would like to know, and then read it again to list the background information—those facts that the obituary is stating. Then we make a list of items to research. The research question is usually who are his parents. Always someone lists getting the death certificate as one of the first items. One day I realized I had never ordered it. I knew when he died and where he was buried, but I never took the time to get the actual death certificate. We should always strive to get every document that might have information about an ancestor. Even when you think you know everything. I know who his parents are, where and when he was born, etc. Of course, one thing I did n...