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Friday, January 15, 2010

Writing a Good Genealogy Query (revisited)

Bob asked:
I have been using Ancestry and did pretty good. My father was Robert Ernest Legg married to Clara Jane Bryhl. His Father was Guy Ellsworth Legg married to Carrie Belle Coomer. His father was William A. Legg married to Louisa Fleming. His father was Alexander Legg married to Clarrissa Allen. This as far as I got with the Legg's. I would appreciate all the help I can get.

Olive Tree Answer: Dear Bob, I'm afraid you've neglected 2 of the very important 3 "W"s needed when asking for help.

You've given me WHO but not the WHERE and WHEN. So I don't know if your family was located in Canada, USA, England, Germany or ... another country.

I also don't know dates. Even approximate dates would be helpful. So not knowing how old YOU are, I can't guestimate years for your parents, grandparents and so on. You could be 20 or you could be 80, as an example. That would make a huge difference as to years of birth of your ancestors.

So all I can advise you to do is to keep searching and tracing your ancestors backwards (as you have done). Look for birth, marriage and death records. Look for census records.

You may want to look at Writing a Good Query or the tutorial called Good Query, Bad Query for help and suggestions to make your genealogy queries the best they can be.

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