Adding up indirect evidence – and grabbing all those bits of information

I love finding stuff like this. My husband’s grandmother, Dorothy (Keane) Burns, was listed in the 1930 U.S. Census as a little girl (age 5), niece of the head of household (Edmund Sweeney), and living at 523 West 135th Street in Manhattan, New York.1 Also in the household were: Ellen Sweeney, Edmund’s wife (age 36,...

Refining a Research Strategy

The start of my genealogical "research" a couple of decades ago consisted mostly of reading through things my family had done already and drawing pedigrees of my ancestors. At some point, my dad and I visited cemeteries where we knew family should be, took some pictures, and added a few names and dates to our...