UP YOUR GENEALOGY GAME!
Thinking outside the box
Improve your family history search skills with the Family Tree Academy. This issue, David Annal demonstrates the value of tracing your tree in a different direction
David Annal
ESSENTIAL SEARCH SKILLS TO MASTER
The Family Tree Academy is here to help you grow your genealogy skills. The aim is to help teach more about the search skills and source know-how needed to step up your family history research.
In this issue, Family Tree Academy tutor David Annal discusses how to take Family Reconstruction one step further, on the quest to pinpoint the precise ancestor we’re after. He likes to refer to it as ‘Chickens and Eggs’.
In the March Family Tree Academy, we introduced you to a problem-solving strategy known as Family Reconstruction.
The case study that we looked at involved the search for the origins of a man called Richard Oliver and the particular problem we had was that there was no obvious record of Richard’s birth/baptism. But what can we do, as so often happens, when our searches lead us to more than one possible birth record? How do we work out which (if any) of the candidates is the one we’re looking for?
We’re still going to want to apply the basic principles of Family Reconstruction but as we’re dealing with a number of potential ancestors, we’re going to have to take a slightly different approach.
This month's case study
In this month’s case, our target is a man called Edward Greenhill who was born sometime in the early 1780s in Hertfordshire. I always like to begin a case like this by closely examining the information we have about the person we’re interested in.
What information do we have?
• The earliest reference we have is Edward’s marriage to Sally TOMPSON at St Mary’s, Hemel Hempstead on 22 October 1805.