Pioneers
The questions you should always be asking about your pioneer family
If I have stories can I find facts to support them?
Is this a family with a pioneering tradition?
Can I tell when they migrated? Try to pinpoint the date as closely as you can.
Why did they leave the place they had been?
Why did they choose the place they went?
Who went with them? Who is important to them?
Did they go to meet others they already knew or did others join them from the place they came from?
Who was left behind?
Build a basic timeline of your migrating family. You can do this in some genealogy programs using the facts function but free form in a Word document allows you to make notes to yourself AND you can add facts that you have not yet confirmed with a note about them (1846 son Andrew is born in Alabama according to trees online but later census says Tennessee)
Timelines are a must for families on the move. They track their whereabouts and let you see things you would otherwise miss.
It is important to find the marriages of all the children in the family so that you can recognize allied families and married daughters or sisters.
If you don't have a lot of details on your migrating family look for previously done reearch online - it may not be accurate but you should be able to tell if you can't confirm the data with any records. It will give you a starting point.
Add these facts to your timeline so that you have events that tell you where everyone was at a given time.
Determining the level of pioneering your family did.
Were they one of the first families there? Did they arrive a little later after things were slightly more established?
Geographical Information
Make certain you know when the place they are moving to became a state.
Make certain you know the boundary history of the county where they settle by using something like the Atlas of Historical Boundaries
Locate a county history
some suggestions for finding county & town histories:
you can also Google the place for history of a town or county that might be on general webpages or Wikipedia type sites.
What to look for in county & town histories:
Most have a chapter on early settlements in each township that will recount something about how the first people got there, how they travelled there. Note the dates of the first setttlements.
Google historical maps for the area; township maps etc. so that you can physically see what they are talking about.
In the biography section of the county history search to see if there are any other names connected to your family - families they married with or people you recognize in any way and do a quick scan of where they came originally.
alivingston@wvc.edu mizliv@yahoo.com
https://sites.google.com/site/annesfamilyhistoryresources/