Category: Methodology

Methodology

21 Ways to Improve Your Family History

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January is the perfect time to reset your genealogy practice.

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced researcher, committing to improvement helps you work more efficiently, build a more accurate family tree, and enjoy the research process more.

Here are 21 practical ways to strengthen your family history research this year.

1. Identify your master tree

Most genealogists maintain multiple family trees across different websites to access various research tools. This can become time-consuming and messy, if not managed properly. Choose one tree as your master. Prioritise keeping it up to date.

See: How to Manage Multiple Family Trees to Benefit Your Research

2. Conduct a Tree Health Assessment

Evaluate the strength of evidence supporting your conclusions using my Tree Health Assessment Tool. This helps you assess accuracy and completeness, and identifies where to focus your research.

See: Tree Health Assessment Tool

3. Make place names consistent and fix names of people

Start tidying your family trees with consistent wording for places and corrections to any errors in people’s names. Focus on your master tree first.

See: Resolving Place Names

4. Fix other errors in your master tree

Address any other obvious errors such as merging duplicate people.

See: Create an Accurate Family Tree by Fixing Errors

5. Review sources to check they are the best available

A key principle in good genealogy is using the best sources. It’s tempting to add the first sources you find. Take time to go back and verify you’ve used the best ones.

6. Look for more sources to strengthen your conclusions

If you haven’t already used the best sources, find better ones. If your Tree Health Assessment identified conclusions with insufficient evidence, search for more.

7. Reorganise your computer filing system

Good genealogists are well-organised. Improve your filing system so you can quickly find what you need, when you need it. [internal link to blog post 13]

8. Set up a regular maintenance time

Rather than trying to fix everything at once, schedule regular maintenance sessions to make improvements.

See: Maintain Your Family History

9. Improve your research planning

Good genealogists take a systematic approach to research. Make changes to how you plan your research. For ideas and tips, see Plan Your Family History.

10. Visit an archive or library in person

Many family history sources are not available online. Visiting an archive or library gives you access to a broader range of information.

See: Offline Family History Sources: Hidden Treasures

Shelf of old books in a library
Books I discovered in a library in Penzance, Cornwall, England

11. Add more FFANs to your tree

Sources about your extended family or friends, associates, and neighbours can provide additional evidence for your family history. Focus on those that may contribute useful information, such as DNA matches on lines with unanswered questions.

See: Broaden Your Genealogy Research: How to Use the FFANs Method

12. Get DNA tested for more evidence

DNA evidence can support or refute documentary evidence, helping make your family history more accurate.

See: Is DNA Essential Evidence for Family Historians?

13. Integrate Tree Health Assessment results into your research planning

Use your Tree Health Assessment results to prioritise which evidence you need to strengthen conclusions in your family tree or answer research questions.

14. Improve your skills in working with DNA evidence

Using DNA evidence well requires specific knowledge and skills. Find a group, read a book, watch YouTube videos. Whatever suits your learning style.

See: DNA program of the Society of Australian Genealogists

15. Take a course

Identify the skills and knowledge you need to improve your research. Find a course that will help you develop them. I teach genealogical research methods, but many other courses are available online and in person.

See: Online courses and programs at the Society of Australian Genealogists

16. Learn about different types of sources

Enrich your family history by learning about different types of sources. They may help you break down a brick wall or provide interesting new perspectives.

See: FamilySearch Wiki

17. Learn how to analyse and document evidence

Adding source citations to your family tree is just one way to document the evidence supporting your conclusions. Sometimes a citation is not enough.

For example, see More Than a Citation for DNA Evidence

18. Start using family history software

Online family trees are great tools, but family history software provides more complete documentation and additional research tools. It also lets you store your family history on your own computer, increasing privacy and data safety. If you’re already using it, learn about some of the features you’ve not yet tried.

See: Where’s the Best Place to Put Your Family Tree?

19. Try a different tool

Many tools can help with your family history. Go exploring! Two of my favourites are Wikitree and Notion.

See: Using Notion in Family History and Five Reasons to Use Wikitree

20. Read or listen to someone else’s family history

Other people’s research can provide information and ideas about sources to investigate or alternatives to explore. It may also inspire you to try different research techniques, tools, or approaches.

See: How to Use Other People’s Family History Research

21. Write up parts of your family history

Writing up your family history isn’t just about sharing your research, although that’s valuable. Writing also helps you process information. It may reveal new research leads, inconsistencies, and gaps.

group of young children dressed in their best clothes
Unidentified family photograph, from my maternal grandfather

Start Small, Build Momentum

You don’t need to tackle all 21 suggestions at once.

Pick two or three that resonate with you or address your biggest challenges. Build these into your regular research routine. Once they become habits, add more.

Small, consistent improvements compound over time. By the end of the year, you’ll have a stronger, more accurate family tree and more confidence in your research skills.

Writing by Gari Melchers
Methodology

The Scoping Advantage: Why You Should Review What You Know

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It’s very easy to get caught up in the thrill of family history research and keep pushing forward, but every now and then you need to pause and review.

Scoping is the second step in the process of family history research, occurring after you have established your research goals and objectives. But it is also the point that you should return to periodically, to get back on track.

Scoping helps keep your research accurate and focused.

The Purpose of Scoping

Scoping achieves three major objectives that significantly shape your research:

  1. Reviewing Existing Knowledge: You review the state of knowledge about your family history topic, including what you already know and, importantly, what other researchers might know.
  2. Reviewing What You Need: You review the information that you need for your family history.
  3. Reviewing Available Sources: You determine what other sources are available to provide additional information, especially if the information you currently possess is insufficient.

The Benefits of Reviewing Your Knowledge

While it may feel like a detour, scoping provides significant advantages and improves the quality of your family history.

1. Preventing Unnecessary Duplication

The most immediate benefit of taking time to review your research is efficiency: Scoping reduces the likelihood of unnecessarily repeating research that has already been done.

It is critical to remember that the answer to your research questions might already exist in information you currently possess, meaning a simple review could save you hours or even days of work. Taking another look at documents you already hold is always worth the effort.

Of course, sometimes repeating a research effort is necessary and worthwhile. Scoping can identify where that is required.

2. Ensuring You Have Solid Foundation Points

Beyond saving time, scoping protects the integrity of your research process and the accuracy of your family tree. Scoping informs your research plan so that you start from the very best place.

Scoping helps you avoid basing your research on faulty information or incorrect assumptions. By thoroughly reviewing and analysing what you currently know, you establish your solid foundation.

Refocus With Scoping

By undertaking a rigorous scoping exercise, you move closer to creating a good quality family history.

Return to the scoping step whenever you get stuck in your research. A fresh look at the existing information usually reveals new research leads.

You should also conduct a scoping exercise periodically on your whole family history, to help you refocus. While you are at it, you might like to review your goals and objectives at the same time!

Gather and analyse the sources and information you already have. Use my Tree Health Assessment Tool to identify the areas where your evidence is strong and the areas where it is weak. Use this to revise your research questions and tasks in your research plan.

Scoping is an essential part of the research process. By confirming what you know and pinpointing what you still need to find out, you ensure that every subsequent step you take is necessary and strategically focused, setting you up for success in uncovering your family’s story.

About the Author

Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.

Using this article or the infographic

You are welcome to reproduce this article or the infographic for non-commercial purposes, provided you attribute the source.

Methodology

How to Manage Family History Tasks in Notion

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It’s common to feel a bit overwhelmed by the number of family history tasks you still need to complete. This article provides instructions for managing these tasks in Notion, to help you stay focused and plan your time effectively. No formulas required!

If you have not already done so, follow the instructions in my article, Manage family history projects with Notion, to set up a Project database, a Research Questions database, a Tasks database and a Notes database. Create projects for your grandparent lines, and some places and themes.

Then follow the instructions in my article, Develop family history projects in Notion, to add research questions, tasks and notes.

What are tasks?

Tasks are actions that are undertaken to answer a research question, test a hypothesis or provide information for a family history project.

Examples:

  • Order a transcription of the death certificate for William Milson, 1885/2378 (NSW, Australia)
  • Look for DNA matches with the surname of Kiesecker in their family tree
  • Get a list of townlands in Cavan, Ireland
  • Prepare a draft of chapter 3 of my thesis

Maintain your Tasks Database

Task management is more effective if you enter your tasks accurately and completely. It’s a good idea to periodically open your Tasks Database and check that tasks are assigned to one or more Projects and the other columns are also filled in.

Every task should be assigned to one or more Projects and one or more Research Questions.

Setting up Your Task Management Tools

Here are three useful views of the Tasks database. You can use all three, or just the one that helps you the most.

These instructions result in three separate views of the Tasks database.

three toggle headings for three different views of the Tasks Database for family history
Three separate views of the Tasks Database, within a Toggle heading that saves space

Another option is to add the second and third lists on different tabs on the first one, by clicking on the Plus icon and adding a new view. Then rename each tab appropriately. See image at the end of the article.

1. Create an Inbox

An Inbox is a place where you can quickly add a task to Notion with minimal details, and then process it later.

An Inbox is great when you are away from your computer and want to make a note of something you need to do before you forget. You can grab your phone, add the task to Notion using a macro button, and it’s done. It is also great when you are down the proverbial rabbit hole, find something interesting that is unrelated to your current project, but need to record it to deal with it later.

The Inbox captures tasks that have not yet been assigned to a Project.

Steps:

  1. On your Home Page, add a Toggle Heading called: ‘Inbox’ or ‘Research Tasks Inbox’
  2. Add a colour to that heading
  3. Open the toggle and add a linked view of the Tasks Database within the coloured section. Instructions are in my article: Manage family history projects with Notion.
  4. Click on the filter icon (three horizontal lines) and select Research Projects
  5. The Research Projects filter now appears under the title Inbox. Click on the down arrow to the right and at the top of the popup box it says ‘Research projects contains’. Change ‘contains’ to ‘Is empty’. Your Inbox now only lists those tasks you have not yet assigned to a Project.
  6. Keep it in Table layout if you wish, or change it to a List view. If you keep the Table layout, you should simplify it by hiding some of the properties (columns) using the Settings – ‘Property visibility’ feature.
Toggle heading in Notion showing where to insert a linked view database
Add a Toggle Heading, then colour. This makes it easy to see where to insert the linked view of the database to be within the Toggle.

An Inbox is meant to be a temporary holding place. Make sure that you check it now and then, and clear tasks by assigning them to Projects and completing the rest of the columns.

2. Priority list

Most family history research tasks will not have due dates, so you need a different system to clearly identify which tasks you should be working on first. If you followed my instructions in setting up your Tasks Database, you already have a property column called Priority. Now you can create a subset of the tasks that you have classified as a high priority.

Steps:

  1. On your Home Page, add a Toggle Heading: ‘High Priority Tasks’
  2. Add a colour to that heading
  3. Open the toggle and add a linked view of the Tasks Database within the coloured section.
  4. Click on the filter icon and select the property Priority.
  5. The Priority filter now appears under the title Inbox. Click on the down arrow to the right and the popup box lists all the priority categories. Select ‘High’. This linked view now only lists those tasks you ranked as a high priority.
  6. Optional: On a separate tab, repeat the process, but change the layout to List layout. By default this will just list the task name. If you wish to display the relevant project, change the Property visibility in Settings (top right corner of the table) to display the following properties: Name, Project.
a linked view of the family history Tasks Database in Notion showing high priority tasks in three views
Example of a linked view of the Tasks Database, filtered to show those tasks that are categorised as High Priority. Tab one is in Table layout, tab two is in List layout and tab three is in Board layout.

3. Due soon list

If you work on projects with due dates then a Due Soon list will be useful. If you have not already done so, add a Due Date property column to the Tasks Database.

Next steps:

  1. On your Home Page, add a Toggle Heading: ‘Due Soon’
  2. Add a colour to that heading
  3. Open the toggle and add a linked view of the Tasks Database within the coloured section.
  4. Click on the filter icon and add a filter for Status, then check ‘To Do’ and ‘In Progress’. This will hide any completed tasks from the list.
  5. Then add another filter for Due Date and select the time period you wish. For example, due this week or due in the next four weeks.
  6. Choose List Layout, then change the Property visibility to display only the following properties: Name, Due Date.
a linked view of the family history Tasks Database in Notion showing three different views on three different tabs
You can place the three views on different tabs if you don’t want to keep them separate.
This picture shows that combined format of three tabs and the Due Soon list is visible.

Read more about improving the quality of your family history in my book, The Good Genealogist.

Back to the Notion in family history page.

Feedback is Welcome

I’d love to hear how you are using Notion in family history. Please also let me know if any of my instructions are unclear.

About the Author

Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.

Methodology

Why Genealogists Must Research Places, Not Just People

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When you research family history, it’s natural to focus on people. Their names, dates, and relationships. Yet behind every individual is a place: a town, a parish, a street, even a single house. These places shaped your ancestors’ lives, created the sources you now consult, and influenced the decisions they made.

Understanding locations isn’t a side project in genealogy. It’s central to doing thorough, accurate research. Here are five reasons why studying places is just as important as studying people.

1. Places Guide You to the Right Sources

Sources are usually tied to a location. Knowing where your family lived helps you identify what sources exist, who created them, and where they’re now held.

Take civil registration as an example. In England, civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths began in 1837, though compliance was patchy until 1875. In New South Wales, Australia, it started on 1 March 1856, while Tasmania commenced earlier on 1 December 1838. If you’re researching before these dates, you must turn to church registers for baptisms, marriages, and burials.

The same applies to other sources: newspapers, land deeds, school registers, or hospital archives. Knowing the local religious denominations or administrative boundaries will help you identify which institutions created sources and which repositories now hold them.

One of my family’s churches – St George the Martyr Church, Southwark, England
(my photo, 2024 – AI used to lighten the sky as it was a grey gloomy day!)

2. Places Help You Interpret Sources Accurately

Even when you have the right source, place knowledge helps you interpret it correctly. Words, occupations, and personal names may have different meanings in different places. Local history can also alert you to language differences. Were the records in English, Latin, German, or Gaelic?

Place research is also a valuable problem-solving tool. Consider this example: I was tracing a couple who lived in Tumut, New South Wales. Their civil registration records showed children born every 18 months in Tumut. Then I found another child recorded with the same parent names, but in Morpeth. A quick map search showed the two towns were 566 kilometres apart. In the 1850s, such a distance was significant. The discovery didn’t prove the child wasn’t theirs, but it told me I needed more detailed research before drawing conclusions.

Place knowledge adds that essential layer of caution and clarity.

3. Places Reveal the Context Behind Life Events

Family history isn’t lived in isolation. Migration patterns, wars, local industries, epidemics, and religious or cultural tensions all shaped your ancestors’ lives. Studying the history of a place allows you to understand not only what happened to your family but why it may have happened.

If your ancestor left Ireland in the late 1840s, knowledge of the Great Famine and its impact on different counties will help explain that decision. Or if your family lived near a new railway line, it may account for sudden changes in occupation, travel, or marriage networks.

Local context turns information into meaningful history.

4. Places Change Over Time And So Do Sources

Today’s map isn’t the same as yesterday’s. Boundaries shift, towns merge, names change, and entire communities can disappear. Without understanding these changes, it’s easy to misinterpret a source or not find it at all.

A single locality may appear under different names at different times. When researching my father’s family I had to learn how parts of Essex in England became absorbed into London. And while researching my mother’s family I discovered that Evan in New South Wales became known as Castlereagh and later Penrith.

Wars, floods, and infrastructure projects can also erase or alter landscapes.

Recognising these changes allows you to follow your family across time and place.

5. Places Provide Living Stories

Perhaps the most rewarding reason to study locations is how they enrich your storytelling. A family tree filled with names and dates is important, but it’s the detail of place that makes ancestors real.

Learning about their neighbourhood, the schools they attended, the churches they worshipped in, the farms they worked, or the streets they walked, lets you imagine daily life. You can weave social history into your narrative: Was the town growing or declining? What industries employed most people? Did local events bring communities together or divide them?

Adding these layers can create a vivid narrative. Place knowledge enables you to tell stories that resonate not only with you but with others who read your research.

The River Thames near Twickenham (west of London, England), where my watermen plied their trade in the 18th and 19th centuries (my photo, 2024)

Moving Forward

Genealogy is always about people, but people are inseparable from places. Understanding the towns, parishes, and landscapes where your family lived helps you find sources, interpret them accurately, place events in context, follow families through boundary and place name changes, and bring their lives to life.

By studying places as well as people, you’ll build a richer, more accurate, and more engaging family history.

Find out how to research places using my 8-step research process for places: Studying Locations: Researching Places for Genealogy.

Note: My other blog posts about researching places are currently being revised. I will add links to the updated posts when they are available.

About the Author

Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.

Methodology

Create a Master Genealogy Research Plan in Excel

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Are you juggling multiple research plans and struggling to see the big picture of your family history research? If you’ve been using separate plans for each family group or project, you might be missing opportunities to work more strategically.

A master genealogy research plan consolidates all your research into a single, comprehensive Excel workbook. This approach gives you an overview of your entire research landscape, helps you identify gaps and priorities, and makes it easier to plan your next steps efficiently.

In my article How to Create a Research Plan in Excel, I showed you how to develop individual research plans for each family group. That method works well, you might find you need a broader perspective to research strategically. A master plan addresses this need by bringing everything together in one place.

What is a Research Plan and What are the Benefits?

A genealogy research plan identifies:

  • the questions that you want to answer
  • the hypotheses you want to test
  • the information that you need, and
  • the tasks you need to undertake.

Use your research plan to track your progress, pick up where you left off, record the sources used and document a summary of your findings. A research plan supplements the main documentation in your family history software or online family tree.

Why Create a Master Plan?

Having multiple research plans worked for me for many years. But it became difficult to plan my family history research as a whole. I needed a way to get an overview of my entire research, identify gaps and priorities, and work strategically across all my family lines.

Previously, I developed various separate tools for these purposes: a research index, the Tree Health Assessment Tool, and a BDM index to track birth, death and marriage records. While these tools were helpful, they created their own management challenges.

The alternative approach is to combine these tools into a single master plan. Having one plan keeps all your information together. You’re less likely to lose documents or information, and you can work more strategically. It’s also easier to take your plan with you when you go out to research.

I currently use Notion for my master plan, but I want to demonstrate how you can create a master plan in Excel for those who prefer spreadsheets or don’t use Notion.

How to Structure Your Master Genealogy Research Plan

This master plan uses six worksheets, each with a specific function. Keeping related information together in one workbook aids planning and prevents information from getting scattered across multiple files.

Sheet 1: Research Index

The research index provides a summary of key research questions or status for each family group in your tree.

Excel columns are designed for filtering, so separate your data based on how you might want to filter it.

Column setup:

  • Column A — Family. List family groups using the surnames of both spouses. Each row represents a different family group.
  • Column B — Grandparent line. Assign each family group to one of your four grandparent lines. Use your grandparents’ surnames. Mine are: Everett (father’s father), Flanagan (father’s mother), Hend (mother’s father) and Rusten (mother’s mother).
  • Column C — Generation. Assign each family group to their generation. You are generation 1, your parents are 2, your grandparents are 3, and so on (see sheet 6).
  • Column D — ID. Add unique identifier numbers for the couples. I use the RIN from my family history software.
  • Column E — Key research questions or status. Add the most important research question for that family group. You don’t need content for every family group. Update this regularly as your research progresses.
  • Column F — Rating. Assign a complexity rating to the research required. This helps you choose which family to work on based on available time. See the key on Sheet 6.

Filtering example: To see all family groups on just one grandparent line, filter Column B for that grandparent’s surname.

Sheet 2: Evidence

This sheet stores the table format of your Tree Health Assessment. It provides a summary of evidence strength for key information or events for each family group.

This assessment helps you identify where your research foundation is strongest and where it needs reinforcement. For instructions on creating this assessment, see my article How to Apply the Family Tree Health Assessment Tool.

Extract from a sample Tree Health Assessment Table in Excel, with rows for family groups and columns indicating the strength of evidence for key facts and events
Extract from a sample Tree Health Assessment Table

Sheet 3: Plan and Log

This is the main sheet containing all your research questions, hypotheses and tasks.

Column setup:

  • Column A — Grandparent line. Use your four grandparents’ surnames.
  • Column B — Generation. Assign each question, hypothesis or task to the relevant generation.
  • Column C — ID. Add unique identifier numbers for the person(s) relevant to the question, hypothesis or task.
  • Column D — Surname. Insert the surname of the person relevant to the question, hypothesis or task.
  • Column E — Ref. no. Assign a unique number to each question, hypothesis or task. Tasks attach to either a question or hypothesis as sub-numbers. Add the first letter of the grandparent line to the number, and restart numbering for each grandparent line.
  • Column F — Your research question, hypothesis or task. Write the question, hypothesis or task in this column.
  • Column G — Category. Categorise as question, hypothesis or task.
  • Column H — Status. Open (O) or Closed (C).
  • Column I — Sources to examine & repositories
  • Column J — Sources used & citation
  • Column K — Notes
  • Column L — Analysis
  • Column M — Transcript or extract
Extract from a sample master genealogy research plan in Excel, sheet 3, demonstrating columns A-H
Extract from a sample master genealogy research plan, sheet 3, demonstrating columns A-H

If you wish, you can add more columns for information that might assist your research planning. For example, you could add a column for country and then filter all research for that location. Or add a column for subjects such as convicts or immigration to group related research topics together.

Sheet 4: Surnames

In my article Create a Surname Tree to Organise Your Family History, I showed how to create a tree providing an overview of surnames in your family tree and which line they belong to. This serves as a useful research tool.

On this sheet, either insert an image of your surname tree or create a table version instead.

a table with a column for each grandparent line, listing the surnames that appear on that line
Example surname table, by grandparent line

Sheet 5: BDM Index

In my article Using Excel to Track Birth, Death and Marriage Records, I demonstrated a spreadsheet for tracking vital records you need and those you’ve already obtained. This index helps you plan and prioritise record purchases while ensuring you don’t waste money on duplicates.

Add this index to Sheet 5 of your master plan to keep all your planning tools in one place.

Sheet 6: Key

Use this sheet to list explanations, abbreviations and keys for your other sheets.

Research complexity ratings for Sheet 1:

  • 1 Significant research question or problem
  • 2 Needs research to progress further or relationships not proven
  • 3 Needs research but only to tidy things up. Not essential to progress further
  • 0 No work currently needed. All relationships sufficiently proven
  • 4 Previous generations need to be proven first

Generation key:

  • 1 me
  • 2 parents
  • 3 grandparents
  • 4 great grandparents
  • 5 2x great grandparents
  • 6 3x great grandparents
  • 7 4x great grandparents
  • 8 5x great grandparents
  • 9 6x great grandparents
  • 10 7x great grandparents
  • 11 8x great grandparents

Tree Health Assessment colours for Sheet 2:

  • Green: Strong evidence
  • Yellow: Some evidence, insufficient
  • Red: No evidence or not researched
  • Grey: Not applicable

Working Strategically With Your Master Plan

The power of a master plan lies in its ability to help you work strategically across your entire family history. Use the filtering features to do things such as:

  • Focus on one grandparent line at a time
  • Identify all open research tasks across your tree
  • Find families with brick wall problems based on complexity ratings
  • Plan research trips by filtering for specific locations or repositories.

The interconnected nature of the sheets means you can move between high-level planning (Sheet 1) and detailed research tracking (Sheet 3), while keeping supporting tools like your BDM index readily accessible.

Try a Master Genealogy Research Plan

A master genealogy research plan helps you coordinate your research and work more systematically. By consolidating your planning tools into a single Excel workbook, you gain the overview needed to make informed decisions about where to focus your research time and energy.

Start by setting up the six sheets outlined above, then gradually migrate your existing research questions and tasks into the master plan format. You don’t need to complete everything at once and you don’t need to include everyone who is in your family tree. Build your master plan incrementally as you work on different family lines.

For more articles and information about using Excel in family history, head to the Excel page. You can also download your free copies of my Excel guides on my Free Stuff page. A guide about this master plan (with examples) will be available for download soon.

About the Author

Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.