OK, it’s the middle of January, and I’ve pretty much blown all of my personal New Year’s resolutions. It never takes long with me!

So I’ll make some new ones for my genealogy research and see if I can be more successful there.  And I shall be most interested to hear what your genealogy resolutions are as well.

Resolution #1: Try new ways of searching. It is so easy to get into a rut.  Maybe you always start your searches from trees. Or from data collection pages.  But if you do the same thing all the time, you might be missing something.  When you are searching for something on a specific ancestor, you might want to start from:

1.  Search Records from a tree page; this gathers everything you know about the person and searches with that information
2.  Search from the home page or search page;  try a minimal search with just names, birth year and birth location
3. Try searching with all of the exact filters set
4. Experiment with name filters and find which ones you feel most comfortable starting with
5. Start on Group page such as census or military. You will find them under the drop down for Search
6.  Start on a data collection page and do a surname search.
7. Check the Card Catalog, set the sort order to Date Updated or Date Added and see what might be new and interesting
8. Make sure you check the place pages for the state you are researching (see the map at the bottom of the search page) and see what Ancestry.com has available.
9. Do a google search.  Type first name, surname, state and the word genealogy into the search box and see what happens.  Maybe nothing, but what if you do find something?
10. Start with Ancestry.com, we do have the largest collection of genealogy records and trees, but there are other sites.  Make sure you exhaust every possibility.

Resolution #2: Aggressively pursue new theories and hunches.  When I am not sure something is right, say someone’s parents, I have started creating a new tree, set it to private, and start testing my theory.  Can I find records and possibly other trees to support my idea?  And if it works, I sync the tree down to Family Tree Maker 2012 and then merge into my main tree.  That way I don’t enter suspect information into my main tree until I feel good about.

Resolution #3: Communicate more. If you don’t ask, you won’t know.  Places to look for those distant cousins:

1. Your message box on Ancestry.com. Somebody may already be trying to talk to you.
2. Look for other people who have your family lines in their trees and send them a message.  Maybe if you pool your information you will find the right answer.
3.  Add updates and corrections to transcriptions on records.  Maybe somebody will see that you know something and reach out to you.  And if someone has already done it, send them a note.
4. Check the message boards, both for locality and surname.  And if you don’t find anything, post what you are looking for.  Make sure you include everything you know.
5.  Search for web pages about counties and surnames that you are researching and see if there is a comments section, or send an email to the owner of the site.

Resolution #4: Educate yourself. There are a lot of resources available on our site as well as other places that will help you know more about how to find your ancestors.  There are many conferences and genealogical societies that can also help you learn more.

1.  Check out Ancestry.com’s learning center and see if there is anything about what you are currently researching.
2. Check out Ancestry.com’s wiki and learn about the state and counties you are researching.
3. Watch a facebook presentation from Ancestry.com (subscribe to our facebook page) or check them out on our livestream page.  Fifteen minutes spent with an expert may give you new ideas on how to research your Native American ancestor’s or get more out of the 1840 census.
4. Attend a conference.  Rootstech (Salt Lake City), NGS (Cincinatti), FGS (Birmingham) and SoCal (Burbank) are the biggies, but there lots of smaller ones that might be closer.  Hearing someone talk about a subject, might give you a new idea on what to try.  And we will be livestreaming classes from the major conferences, so you don’t even have to leave home. 
5. Read a book. You might be amazed at how many genealogy books your local library has or google books.  And they don’t cost anything.
6. Read blogs.  Lots of people write out this hobby of ours.  Geneabloggers is a good resource to jfind blogs. 

Looking over my list, I think I might do a better job of keeping this resolutions. J

Let me know what your resolutions are, I’m always looking for new ways  to get better at this.

Happy Searching!
Ancestry Anne