We have listened to requests from previous students in the GRIP course “Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills” and have added another course related to it. This new course, “Beyond Digging Deeper: Sources, Methods, and Practices,” delves into additional essential record types and provides sessions showing the research process and effective use of tools. This course features hands-on creation of research questions, research plans, and research reports. Application of learned methods will be put into practice throughout the week.
Prior attendance in “Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills” is not essential. The courses work in tandem and complement each other.
Desktop or laptop computers are strongly recommended for this course. If you have an auxiliary monitor, that is a plus. Mobile devices will not be sufficient to handle the in-class work, check reference materials you learn about, and the homework project that will be assigned. You will get the most out of this course if you have word processing software abilities and basic knowledge of spreadsheets. Students should have access to a source-citation guide, such as Evidence Explained, The Chicago Manual of Style, or a source citation QuickSheet, for use in their class project.
Students will prepare short summaries about a few ancestors they want to learn more about (no more than six) before class. These summaries should be no more than a paragraph each and include some of the basic known facts about the ancestor—dates of birth, marriage, and/or death; residences; names of family members and associates, etc. An example will be provided. These summaries, which won’t be submitted for evaluation, are needed for class work by the students during the week. Each student will select one of their own summaries to be the foundation for applying sources, methods, and practices from class sessions to their personal research problem and research plan. More details will be sent to registrants in advance of the course.
NOTE:
Sessions will be recorded and available through Friday, 11 July 2025, at 11:59 PM ET.
All times are listed in Eastern Time.
Live Sessions may be subject to schedule adjustments by your course coordinator.
| Day | Session | Time | Session Title | Description | Instructor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday 23 June |
Intro | 10:00 – 10:30 AM | Introduction for Class | Meet your fellow students | Stuart-Warren | |
| 1 | 10:30 – 11:45 AM | Building a Research Guide Collection: Wikis, Books, Pamphlets, and Online Gems | Learn which outstanding guides should be a part of your own collection whether in print or online form. We’ll analyze and dissect some significant guides to records, localities, and those that cover research methodology. Then we’ll learn how to determine the value of the material, the breadth or lack thereof, and the expertise of the authors. Tips for locating copies of out-of-print books will be included. | Stuart-Warren | ||
| 2 | Noon – 1:15 PM | Investigating Occupations as an Immigration, Migration, and Resettlement Tool | Did your ancestors’ occupations stay the same from their former residence or country and did that have a connection to the reason for coming to the United States? Were they taught or had to find a new trade once in the United States? Is there a familial or community tie to these occupations? Occupational records can add to your understanding of family and community and how the history of the time period affects occupations. Learn ways to follow occupation changes, family relocations, education, retirement, the effects of economic downturns, locations of records, literature on and by specific occupation segments. | Stuart-Warren | ||
| 3 | 2:15 – 3:30 PM | Developing Effective Research Questions | As baby genealogists, we move quickly from ancestor to ancestor and go down rabbit holes in an effort to find more information. However, this practice leads to inefficient research and brick walls. Learning to develop effective research questions is one of the first steps toward becoming a better genealogist. We will discuss what goes into developing an effective research question and review some examples, then students will craft research questions for their own ancestors. | Arner | ||
| 4 | 3:45 PM – 5 PM | Creating Effective Research Plans | Once we have an effective research question, the next step is to create a research plan to answer the question. We will discuss how to create a research plan, including how to determine the types of records most likely to be useful, and review sample research plans. After reviewing some examples, students will use one of their questions from the previous session to create a research plan for the week’s homework assignment. | Arner | ||
| Extra | 5 – 5:30 PM | Enhancement | After School Session | Arner | ||
| Tuesday 24 June |
5 | 10:30 – 11:45 AM | Overcoming Census Oddities in Population and Non-Population Schedules | What do you do when you can’t find your people in the census records? There are obstacles to finding ancestors such as language barriers and literacy issues, indexing errors with human and machine-indexing projects, microfilming and digitization errors, and so on. This presentation will present some of these issues and discuss ways to overcome them. Students will work in both the population schedules as well as the non-population schedules such as the agricultural, manufacturing, mortality, and others. An interactive portion allows the students to practice what they learned and apply it to their own census oddities. | Taplin | |
| 6 | Noon – 1:15 PM | Mining the Written Words of Repositories, Societies, and their Staff | We may ask questions when in a historical repository but too often ignore what those staff members, their predecessors, and bosses provide for us in print. For many decades archivists, librarians, directors, department heads, other county, state, and federal employees have written articles, observations, dissertations and other material. Learn what they have provided for our research, how to access these, and their cited resource material. The in-depth information might tell about cemetery laws, creation of a specific cemetery, how and why a special set of records was created, and the background of a specific set of records they hold. | Stuart-Warren | ||
| 7 | 2:15 – 3:30 PM | Church and Religious Denomination Records | We are told to find a christening, marriage or burial record from the church our family attended. That’s a basic search once we determine the church, if they attended one. However, we need to venture further. Our families often changed religions but why? What more can we learn from those church records and the records of that religion’s hierarchy? What do denominational collections hold to tell family and community history? How can we determine where such records are held? This session provides tools and resources to help answer those questions. | Stuart-Warren | ||
| 8 | 3:45 PM – 5 PM | The Clarifying Practice of Writing a Research Report to Yourself | Genealogists love to seek and find documents and evidence relating to their ancestors. Often more effort is devoted to the act of gathering documents than the process of evaluating evidence. Writing research reports to yourself is beneficial. The writing process forces a genealogist to review where they started a research session, to track sources checked, and encourages thorough evidence evaluation. Writing reveals research holes and evidence conflicts and prompts ideas for future research. Simple proof statements and source citations are introduced. Students will write a basic research report. | Mieszala | ||
| Extra | 5 – 5:30 PM | Enhancement | After School Session | Mieszala | ||
| Wednesday 25 June |
9 | 10:30 – 11:45 AM | Beyond the Boundaries: Unearthing Family Connections in Land Records | Take your family history research to the next level by harnessing the full potential of deeds and other property records. This session will teach you how to extract valuable information from land records that may not be immediately obvious, along with methods for tracking land ownership over time and uncovering elusive records. The strategic use of land records often yields a domino effect, expanding our research to related locations and people we may not have considered. | Powell | |
| 10 | Noon – 1:15 PM | Charting Family Histories: The Intersection of Maps and Genealogy | Borders, boundaries, geography, topography, and location all play a part in where our ancestors lived. They also help us determine where to find sources that recorded the events in their lives. We will discuss locating maps and using them to plot land, navigate migration paths, and reconstruct neighborhoods. | Ingle | ||
| 11 | 2:15 – 3:30 PM | DNA Practical Use: Solutions in Case Studies | DNA ideally follows and enhances our traditional genealogical research—until it doesn’t. DNA can help solve long-standing brick walls and may uncover family secrets and surprises. In terms of your research questions, DNA is another source, another puzzle piece to help answer those questions. Beyond the surprises, we can answer questions such as encountering two (or more) men of the same name in the same town or county, or determining whether a particular child was born of the first wife or the second. In this session, we will discuss which types of DNA tests can help with particular research questions. Interactive exercises will help reinforce the main ideas of the presentation. | Taplin | ||
| 12 | 3:45 PM – 5 PM | Organizing Information: Charts, Spreadsheets and More | Organizing your genealogical information is more than just gathering names, dates, and places and plugging it into a family tree. Sometimes this data needs to be used in timelines or in spreadsheets to analyze and correlate what the evidence is revealing. We will discuss methods for filing to keep your physical and digital items at hand when you need them. We will also feature tools for outlining your information while writing things like research notes and reports. | Ingle | ||
| Extra | 5 – 5:30 PM | Enhancement | After School Session | Ingle | ||
| Thursday 26 June |
13 | 10:30 – 11:45 AM | The U.S. National Archives: Sources, Methods, and Practices for Successful Research | U.S. family history research must include the treasures held within the National Archives (NARA). It protects records of the nation’s civil, military, and diplomatic activities. These include more than 13.5 billion pieces of paper, 15 million maps and charts, 44 million still photos, 40 million aerial photos and more than 835 terabytes of electronic data. Those numbers are constantly growing. Do a deep dive into the myriad finding aids online and off, determine how to find what you seek, and ways to access the massive original records that hold the minutiae of life all the way to far-reaching details that provide joy, sadness, excitement, passion, turmoil, warmth, and a frenzy to find more. | Stuart-Warren | |
| 14 | Noon – 1:15 PM | Historical Context: A Key to Understanding People, Places, and Records | Collecting documents and adding data to a family tree is satisfying, but one must extend the research scope beyond life’s milestones to understand an ancestor’s life and actions. Historical context includes learning about relevant times and places, understanding why records were or were not created, studying the laws impacting people and influencing records, investigating social connections, ethnic groups, economic factors, and more. Exploring historical context promotes a better understanding of the lives of the people researched, enriches the family narrative, and aids in research planning. | Mieszala | ||
| 15 | 2:15 – 3:30 PM | Beyond Basic Pension Records: Exceptional Military Holdings | Researchers desire a 100-page military pension record from the National Archives. While those are definitely desirable, thousands of cubic feet of other military records at both state and federal levels are available to add individual and family details. More are found with local, private, military, and historical organizations. Understanding the differences and complexity in wars, record levels, locations, and access is a necessary step in learning more about our family members and others before and during military service. | Stuart-Warren | ||
| 16 | 3:45 PM – 5 PM | Unraveling a Family Tale: Separating Fact from Fiction | George Teeling was an Irish immigrant who lived in Chicago in the 1850s. Information about him has been passed through family lore. This case study demonstrates research in a wide array of resources to document his life. It shows how to assemble evidence and resolve conflicting information to tell the real story. | McMillin | ||
| Extra | 5 – 5:30 PM | Enhancement | After School Session | Mieszala | ||
| Friday 27 June |
17 | 10:30 – 11:45 AM | Final Student Reports/Homework | We began developing our research plan earlier this week. We’ve expanded it with knowledge gained during each session. We learned about crafting the right types of questions and determining which records will help answer the question. We better understand how to see the discrepancies in records and family stories and how to handle resolving those discrepancies. We will review the student-submitted documents, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the research questions, plans, and reports. | Stuart-Warren & Arner |
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| 18 | Noon – 1:15 PM | Stuart-Warren & Arner |