SETTING A GOAL

My husband's family has lived in America for hundreds of years. Chances were great that much had already been located on his family. Sure enough, the very first time he checked one of the large family databases, he found numerous names.

My family, on the other hand, were immigrants from the late 1800s and early 1900s. I found very little had been done. It was up to me to become the family historian.

Perhaps one of your lines has already been published in a book, or is available on the Internet. It's time to begin the "Preliminary Survey" phase of research to see if others have been working on your line. This means we will explore online databases to see what has been researched on our families.

But finding someone in an online database is not enough. You must also compare what you have found with your personal information, notice if the person has supplied any sources for their information before accepting it as anything more than a hint, and then resolve any conflicts that arise between your own information and that of someone else.