What Made That Happen?

When a relative appears in a record or a document, determine what might have taken place to cause your ancestor to appear in that document or record. Would that event have caused other records to have been created?

For some records this may be obvious (for a death record--someone died). A search on GoogleBooks indicated a relative was pardoned--his name appears in a list of pardons granted during the year. But there may be an application for his pardon or other paperwork in order for the pardon to be approved. And that paperwork may contain more than his name and date which is all that appears on the list of approved pardons.