Striving to Meet Genealogy Standards: Part 1 – Understanding the GPS and Genealogy Standards

For about as long as I have been researching my family’s history (nearly twenty years now), I have worked to improve my genealogy research – not only in the number of ancestors I have identified or how much I have learned about each of them, but also in terms of the quality of my research...

The Level-Up Challenge – For DNA Evidence

Last week I wrote about taking Yvette Hoitink’s Level-Up Challenge for my genealogy research, which pushed me to clarify what I know about my ancestors and helped me focus my research moving forward. As I mentioned in that post, though, when I classified my ancestors at different levels based on how thoroughly I’ve researched them...

Taking the Level-Up Challenge!

Last week, I wrote about evaluating my family tree in terms of completeness, or simply counting how many ancestors I have identified (with at least some confidence). There is much more to genealogy research, though, than simply putting names on a tree - even if you have one or more pieces of evidence that seem...

Questioning the Question

Thinking carefully about a research question before diving in can help to a) highlight what I already know and b) define what, precisely, I want to answer with my research.