Research and Discouragement

There are times when you are going to feel discouraged. The only thing you can do in this instance is not let it get to you. If you let yourself get discouraged you won't keep going with your history and you will give up.

During times like this, I either step away for a little bit or I take all my information and lay it out, look over the last in my line again and decide which person I am going to work on. Once I decide what I am going to work on, then I look at the people I could research. This could be either the farthest person back or one of their spouses or even one of their children. This is a time when you could work on filling in the children's details, i.e. their birth dates, where they were born or the places they lived, their children's names, etc. By doing this you are filling in the gaps in your history and if you post it on the Internet, someone else may only have the information you are missing, but have the line farther back. This is a way to improve your information and at the same time keep from being discouraged.

A good way to find this information is through census records, the later records list the children and their age. You can also find this information from other people's records, but be careful that you double check the information because you don't know their source of information and it might be flawed.

I hope this information helps you and as always happy hunting.
Patti