My Trails into the Past

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...