Bring ‘em Back to Life: Developing an Ancestor Profile
In the course of our genealogical research, we often become engrossed in the collection of information snippets, failing to put them into a logical perspective. We lose sight of the fact that the people we’re tracing participated in the life of their historical times, led complex lives, and interacted with one another.
Organizing the information we collect into a biographical profile can help you begin to recognize character traits and decision patterns. And the profile also provides an invaluable, portable research tool that avoids your taking voluminous amounts of notes with you on research trips.
This seminar presents a methodology and a structured model for taking the details you
collect about your ancestor and creating a biographical profile. We will discuss:
• Establishing your ancestor’s every location,
• Learning about other people in your ancestor’s life,
• Studying local, state and national history to determine what events may have influenced or motivated your ancestor,
• Studying personal events that may have influenced or motivated your ancestor, and
• Effectively organizing materials into a profile that can be used for additional research and for writing.
This approach will not only help you organize your research, it can become the basis for writing detailed biographical sketches or novels about the people whose lives you have been researching.
