What is Genealogy Research?
If you’re reading this there’s a good chance you’ve at least looked at online tools and services that can help you learn about your family history and lineage. I use and like these genealogy research tools, but there’s nothing like the excitement I felt when I received a packet in the mail from the county courthouse in Omaha, and finally learned the names of two of my great-great-grandparents. I was no longer stuck. Nothing in my life until then brought so much excitement as finding two names written on a piece of paper.
The information about my ancestors ended up taking my husband and me almost 5,000 miles round trip between Minnesota and Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia I learned about my 4 times great-grandfather, Moses Stevens. Moses was born in Scotland in about 1785 and settled in Nova Scotia as a child. As an adult he requested and was granted 200 acres from the British Crown. After finding the land record, my husband and I found the property and drove down an old logging road and got lost in the woods.
Why was this so important to me? As I said in my earlier post about Ralph Reed Stevens, I didn’t know anything about this family until I started doing research, and then I found myself wandering around the wilderness on a piece of land that my ancestor owned. I felt roots. It gave me a great sense of belonging and of being not so alone in the world.
Learning about my own family history has given me the passion that I bring to my new career, but my background in finance and technology reminds me to apply Webster’s definition of genealogy: “the study of family ancestries and histories,” and research: “Diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, applications, etc.”
When I research your family ancestry and history, I do it for the “a-ha!” moment; your’s and mine. My training and experience in finance and technology helps me bring diligence and systematic inquiry in order to successfully bring about our “a-ha!” moment.
I have done heir and probate searches that have helped to settle estates, uncovered bizarre stories in old newspapers, scanned railroad records that helped a person conducting due diligence, and even found connections for a mystery cousin who showed up on a DNA list.
Many of you have seen the ads for Ancestry.com and how just clicking on a leaf can bring your ancestors to life and give you a world of knowledge about your heritage that will change your life. But there is much more to genealogy research than that, and clicking on the wrong leaf can take you in the wrong direction and give you false results.
Genealogy research can be as simple as making a copy of a death record or scanning some crumbling papers in an old file, or it can be as complicated as determining someone’s biological grandparents. SliverLinings Research can help you get answers to your questions, and help you to come up with new questions about your family history and your ancestors and your lineage. We would enjoy the opportunity to help you tackle your family mysteries.
Sara Bratsch
SilverLinings Research 