Family History Month - FOCUS

~Today's prompt is brought to you by the letter F ~

Sometimes we get so caught up in the thrill of genealogy hunt that we forget to focus on what we have already "bagged" from a previous hunt.  Have you ever returned from a genealogy research trip with information and documents that you later find you already had?  Have you ever spent time and effort researching a particular location or time frame only to discover that the parameters for your search were all wrong.

Perhaps you were looking at the big picture and forgot to look at (or focus on) what was right in front of you.  The solution to this problem is to focus on one person or one family at a time.  We need to focus on a particular family to the exclusion of all the other wonderful genealogy information out there.  Today pick a family to focus on, print out a family group sheet and review the document for errors, potential problems and missing information.  Some things to consider:

• have you checked names, dates and places to determine if there are gaps in your information
• do you have documents that support your hypotheses
• have you noted the sources for your hypotheses
• have you drafted a chronology or timeline to help you address gaps in your information
• are you missing birth, baptism, marriage, death & burial dates and/or places
• are you missing censuses
• are you missing occupations, residences, emigration/immigration, memberships & affiliations
• are you missing obituaries 

Toady, focus on one family ~ If your software program provides a chronology function and/or a research assistance function use them to jump start your research.  Focus on the information you have and the information you need to flesh out and update that one family file.

(photo by digital artist Simon Howden and made available by FreeDigitalPhotos.net ~ thanks)