Recipie for Research

From “A Genealogist’s Guide to Discovering Your Female Ancestors”
by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack

(This goes for ALL ancestors)

Step One: Ingredients
• Letters
• Diaries
• Oral history
• Home sources and artifacts
• Census schedules
• Wills and probate
• Medical records
• Land records
• Church records
• Vital records
• School records
• Social histories

Step two: Combine Ingredients
Review and analyze all records pertaining to your female ancestors, their families, associates and friends. Add the relevant social history. Mix together family and social history until well blended.

Step three: Bake
Write a narrative biography of your female ancestors that is both a legacy and an interesting read.

The ingredients are all of the sources you consult in your research project, but the sources by themselves do not tell your ancestor’s life story. In the second step, you analyze each record, comparing and combining information from each document with information from social histories. But this is still not your female ancestor’s story. When you go to the final step, writing her biography, where all of the sources meld into an interesting narrative, then you have recorded her legacy.