May 11 - Prepare for a research trip to the courthouse.

May 11 – Prepare for a research trip to the courthouse. Call or look online to check record holdings, hours and visitor regulations. List records you want to find.

I always do my best to be prepared for all my courthouse research trips. I will print out information that I might find online such as on Ancestry.com Birth, Marriage and death indexes. I will use these printouts as a guide to what records I am looking for. The indexes don’t always give me enough information to verify that this is the proper person. Therefore, I like to look at the actual birth, marriage or death certificates to record the additional information that I will find on them, such as recording the person’s parent’s information.  Currently I am working on my application into DAR (Daughters of the American Revolutionary War) and I need to obtain the Birth, Marriage and Death certificates of the first four generations. Since I am generations one, I have those, and my parents are generations tow, I have those too. But these indexes help me to determine which courthouse might have the records that I need. Being prepare helps to utilize your time and keep you focus on your research.

I worked a little more on my Thielke project and added 21 new people and made changes to 16. I added 56 citations. I didn’t realize how large this family is, considering I knew very little about this branch.