Genealogy Essentials Series 2 – Course Schedule

This course has been designed to address one of the most persistent challenges in genealogical research — tracing women across time. Because women historically assumed their husband’s surname at marriage, following a female ancestor through records requires a specific set of strategies. This course explores the variety of record types and research techniques that can reveal a woman’s maiden name, helping researchers break through some of the most common brick walls they will encounter.

Course Objectives:

• Develop a systematic research strategy for tracing female ancestors across name changes and jurisdictional boundaries.
• Identify the record types most likely to preserve or reveal a woman’s maiden name, including vital, land, probate, and church records.
• Understand how naming patterns and family naming traditions can serve as clues to a woman’s maiden name and family of origin.

This course has been designed to move researchers beyond the basic use of federal population schedules and into the fuller universe of census records available to genealogists. Most researchers are familiar with finding a family in a census, but the population schedule is only one piece of a much larger picture. Non-population schedules — including mortality, agricultural, manufacturing, and slave schedules — along with state censuses, offer layers of detail that can transform an ordinary research file into a rich family portrait.

Course Objectives:

• Apply advanced strategies for resolving census discrepancies, tracking families across multiple census years, and using census records to generate new research leads.

• Distinguish between federal population schedules and the range of non-population schedules and understand what genealogical information each can provide.

• Locate and interpret state census records and recognize how they complement and fill gaps between federal census years.

This course has been designed to explain the value of using land records for genealogical research. The course should introduce the two primary categories of land records—state land records and federal land records—and explain the different systems used to survey and describe land. Because land ownership and transfer were routinely recorded, these records often provide evidence of residence, economic activity, and family relationships that may not appear in other sources. Instruction should focus on how these records are created, where they are typically found, and how they can be used to place ancestors in a specific location and time period.

 Course Objectives:

• Identify common repositories and resources for locating land records at both the state and federal levels.
• Distinguish between state land records and federal land records, including the different survey and land description systems used in each.
• Demonstrate how land records can provide evidence of family relationships, property ownership, and geographic location.

This course has been designed to help researchers use maps as active research tools rather than simple reference aids. Understanding where an ancestor lived — and why they may have moved — is essential to finding the right records in the right places. Maps reveal shifting county and state boundaries, common migration corridors, and the geographic context that explains why families appear, disappear, and reappear across the documentary record.

Course Objectives:

• Locate and use historical maps, plat maps, and online mapping tools as practical components of a genealogical research plan.
• Understand how and why political boundaries changed over time and how those changes directly affect where genealogical records are held today.
• Identify the major migration patterns and routes in American history and use them to predict and trace an ancestor’s movement across place and time.

This course has been designed to demonstrate the extraordinary genealogical value contained within probate records. When a person died — whether leaving a will or not — the legal process that followed often generated a rich collection of documents. Wills, inventories, letters of administration, guardian records, and final settlements can name family members, define relationships, establish timelines, and describe the material world an ancestor inhabited. Probate records are among the most informative, and most underused, sources available to genealogists.

Course Objectives:

• Understand where probate records are held, how they are organized, and how to access them at the county, state, and online levels.
• Distinguish between testate and intestate estates and understand the types of documents each process produces and what they can reveal.
• Identify the family relationships and connections that probate records can confirm, suggest, or help reconstruct.

This course has been designed to help researchers take the critical next step that many genealogists overlook — writing down what they have found and what it means. Gathering documents is only part of the research process. When a researcher writes a clear, organized narrative of their findings, patterns emerge, conflicts surface, and the path forward becomes visible. Using a set of documents centered on a single individual, this course walks participants through the process of transforming a collection of records into a written summary that both captures what is known and points toward what still needs to be found.

Course Objectives:

• Build on your introduction to the research report as a framework for pulling together sources, information, and evidence into a living document that captures your current findings and defines the logical next steps in your research.
• Understand how to evaluate your sources and the information they contain, and how writing that evaluation as part of a research summary helps you recognize where evidence is strong, conflicting, or still missing.
• Learn how to organize your sources and the evidence drawn from them into a clear, coherent narrative that accurately reflects what the documents say and what they reveal about an individual’s life.