One Family at a Time

Principles of Family History Research Step 2. Decide What You Want to Learn  One Family at a Time

Research is usually more successful when you work on an entire family group (father, mother and all children). Important clues about an individual are found in his relationships to his family. Community and family context helps us correlate and corroborate data, or reveals inconsistencies. Often it is only by learning about brothers or sisters that you can prove parentage. Experienced genealogists recognize the importance of completing work on an entire family before moving to a different family. It may even help to work on clusters of families that married into each other.

If researching two or more families would move you toward your overall quest, start with the family that is already the best documented and has the most complete event places and dates. Leave the families with less well documented events, or events with vague places or dates until later.

A good research goal is to complete genealogical research and document each event on a selected family group record.