Sponsored By GenealogyBank

16 June 2010

Ask Why?

For any document, ask yourself "why was this document created?" Some will be fairly obvious:

  • death certificate because someone died
  • birth certificate because someone was born

Others not so much, particularly some records in court and other cases. Asking why a document was created will help you to know why some things were included in the document and some things were not. Records we use were created for purposes other than genealogy--keep that in mind.