Review: Genealogy Methods and Techniques: A Practical Guide to Research, by Dr. Karen Cummings

A huge thanks to Harriet Hurley at The Crowood Press for sending me a review copy of Karen Cummings' new book, Genealogy Methods and Techniques: A Practical Guide to Research. The following is the description for the book from the website: 

This book takes the reader on a journey through a series of research strategies, providing guidance at every step of the way. With clear explanations, real-life case studies and over 100 tables, charts and illustrations, it will equip you to apply best practices to your own research right from the start.

The following is my impartial review.

Genealogy Methods and Techniques: A Practical Guide to Research, by Dr. Karen Cummings (The Crowood Press, 2026; £16.99)  https://www.crowood.com/book/genealogy-methods-and-techniques/ 

Many would-be genealogists believe that family history research involves simply diving into online databases and copying other people's family trees from online resources, letting what can be found with ease guide the research process, rather than the skills and consideration of the genealogist that are actually required for successful research. 

Thankfully, Karen Cumming's new book takes a welcome and thoughtful look at the necessary methodology for an effective ancestral pursuit. As she notes in her introduction, "It is quite easy to create a family tree these days. With such a wealth of material available at your fingertips online you can work back through the generations quite quickly, creating a family tree in no time at all. It is easy to create a family tree, but how do you know it is your family tree?"

Structured across eleven chapters, Karen tackles the subject matter with a welcome non-academic tone, exploring what it means to carry out research, and how to be effective in doing so, with her book packed with tips and case studies to guide the reader along the way. 

The introductory chapter defining the nature of family history research is followed by a step-by-step approach to the basics in the subsequent four chapters, inviting you to lay and check the foundations of your research, how to get organised with your research, how to evaluate evidence (what does a document tell you, but also, what does it not tell you?), and how to identify and record the sources consulted (in both academic and more simplistic formats). In Chapter 6 she then looks at how archives categorise their holdings, and how to effectively look for their records on catalogues and datasites (and how to look for gaps in their holdings), and then from Chapter 7 considers how to effectively plan for research by creating source surveys. 

Chapter 8 is one of the bigger chapters, discussing how to put research together, with many effective case studies to illustrate some of the challenges involved, followed then by a detailed consideration of standards in Chapter 9. This chapter includes considered coverage of two standards codes used to help genealogists work out if they are on the right track with their efforts, one from the Society of Genealogists in London called the 'Standards and Good Practice Guide', and then the American based Genealogical Proof Standard, followed by other useful techniques to help with problem solving, such as family reconstitution and the mapping of ancestors' locations. 

Chapter 10 is then a bit of an oddity, a short and well-written look at the use of DNA in family history research, with some methodological considerations for that as a particular field of research, but which does feel a little bit out of place compared to the preceding chapters. This may simply be a reflection of just how different a research tool it is to the traditional archive based resources used by genealogists covered earlier in the book, and which Karen quite rightly notes must still be considered when carrying out genetic genealogy research. Chapter 11 concludes with a simple afterword to the whole tome. 

Mercifully written in plain English rather than in a more formal academic tone adopted by other works in the field, this is a very effective guide that will help the humble genealogist stay on track with their research. Each chapter is clear, concise, and well illustrated, concluding with a summary of key points and action points to consider in going forward. 

Whilst the book almost exclusively relies on English based records alone for its case studies, the point of the work is to show how to find records - any records - and how to consider them and employ them for your research, and thus the techniques discussed can be just as effectively applied to research sources in Scotland, Ireland, or anywhere else in the world. Genealogy Methods and Techniques is a cracking work which I have no hesitation in recommending to all those wishing to become genealogical researchers rather than genealogical sheep!

(With thanks to Harriet) 

Chris

Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. Also available -Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. To purchase in the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.

Scottish Baronial Families 1250-1750, by David Dobson - review

The Genealogical Publishing Company has kindly sent me a copy of David Dobson's new book, Scottish Baronial Families 1250-1750, for review.

Under Scotland's old feudal system, baronies were erected as administrative areas in Scotland, with their chief overseers, the barons, being the Scottish equivalent of the English 'lord of the manor'. Barons were not a peerage rank, with a baron only being a baron so long as he retained the barony to which he had been granted a right to oversee - or to be more accurate, so long as he retained the 'caput' of the barony, where the barony courts were held. As a feudal possession. baronies were heritable, and could thus be passed down to an heir. The role of baronies and their barons diminished following the passing of the Heritable Jurisditions Act of 1747.

David's book provides a concise introduction to the topic, summarising the role of the barons in Scottish society, and identifying the limited number of baronies for which records have been published. There then follows the main event, an alphabetical listing of over a thousand baronial familes known to exist over a 500 year period from 1250-1750. The main source used by David is The Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, and in the introduction he notes that for more concise information on the families themselves, Margaret Stuart's Scottish Family History (1979, GPC, Baltimore) should be consulted. 

The book does not act as a manorial documents register, as found down south, it identifies the individuals known to have held baronies, and when they were granted the right to do so, with no further source citations noted in most cases, apart from a very general bibliography noted in the introduction. This means that if you wish to chase records for those noted, many of which are in private hands, there will still be some work to do for the reader. In addition, an index of barony placenames might have been a useful addition, which is unfortunately missing. 

Nevertheless, this is still a very useful guide to those known to have held baronies in Scotland, a much under-used source for local records. An appendix at the end also identifies some Scots-Irish baronets, not to be confused with barons, these being created for entiriely different purposes from 1611 as a means to fund the Plantations of Ulster and the settlement of Nova Scotia.  

Scottish Baronial Families 1250-1750, by David Dobson, is available to buy from the Genealogical Publishing Company in Baltimore Maryland, USA, priced at US $35. For further details visit https://genealogical.com/store/scottish-baronial-families-1250-1750/.

(With thanks to the GPC for the review copy)

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Update on Evidence Explained availability in the UK

After my recent review of Elizabeth Shown Mills' new fourth edition of Evidence Explained (see http://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2024/04/evidence-explained-4th-edition-by.html), I was contacted by Murray Archer from Glasgow of West of Scotland FHS to say that he had been unable to obtain a print copy of the book from Amazon, or from Genealogical Publishing Company's overseas printing partners, who apparently don't cover the UK. 

I've been in touch with Elizabeth, who tells me that she was informed it was due to go onto the UK Amazon site at the start of April, and she is now currently chasing up her publisher about this. I know from my own experience that when my books are published in the UK, it is usually a few months before it then appears on overseas Amazon domains, so I suspect this is just the same thing happening in reverse. 

Hang in there, therefore, it shouldn't be too long before it become available, but if you can't wait, the e-version is certainly available for now (see previous blog post above)!   

(With thanks to Murray and Elizabeth)

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Evidence Explained 4th edition, by Elizabeth Shown Mills - review

Elizabeth Shown Mills' book Evidence Explained has now reached its fourth edition. So what is the book, and how can it help genealogists?

When carrying out genealogical research we come across all sorts of soures that can contribute to the narrative being pursued. We need to consider the evidential value of each source - is it accurate (just because it is written in black and white, or found on a website online, that does not necesarily mean it is true!), is it a primary or secondary source, can the evidence in a source be corroborated by other sources, and much more. Or to put it more simply, trust nothing, question everything! When sources are combined, we can create a proof for an argument that something happened to someone at a particular time and place, but along the way we may find that some of the sources used in such a proof conflict with each other. This is why we need to understand how and why particular sources were created, in order to evaluate their efficacy for our research. Even then, the research is never complete - it may take just one new source previously not found to completely upend a previously concuded theory within a proof. In addition to all of this, we also need to be able to create descriptions of where and how our sources are found, using citations that can allow us to easily find them again should we need to, and/or to allow others to also locate the same piece of evidence in due course. 

In this updated edition of Elizabeth's book, long viewed as an essential within the genealogical profession since its first publication in 2007, she initially explains the nature of proofs, sources and evidence, before then turning to the various ways that source citations can be constructed. She then discusses the fundamentals of what makes a citation and how to build one, with various templates - for example, how do you cite a book or magazine article that you have found, or a particular website. 

Subsequent chapters look at particular classes of records that we may wish to engage with - archives and artifacts, business and institutional records, cemetery records, census records, church records, and more. There are particular suggested citation solutions given for sources found from across the world, with Scotland and Ireland included, for example in how to cite Scottish civil registration records, or the earlier Old Parochial Records, as well as sources such as Griffith's Valuation and the Irish Registry of Deeds. 

The book is written from a US perspective, and there are occasional factual errors when crossing the ocean - Scotland did not unite with England in 1607, for example (the Crown of both countries was merged in 1603, with the political union with England in 1707), and there is an odd solitary reference to "Griffith's Evaluations" - however, this is a not genealogy how-to book, but a guide on how to create adequate source citations. Those quoted for this side of the Atlantic are very effective, and there is enough information from other types of sources to allow individuals to construct their own bespoke citations for particular situations which may not be included. 

There are, of course, many possible ways to cite sources. When I studied at Strathclyde University, for example, we were encouraged to use the Harvard style of referencing, which I still use to an extent to this day (although I use a more simplified version when constructing client reports). As Elizabeth herself notes, "Citations are flexible structures. As with any type of structure, certain elements are essential while others are optional. Standard building blocks can be assembled in various ways to fit each need". So whilst some may use Elizabeth's book to try to find a definitive way to cite a source, that may slightly miss the point - the key point is that there are basic elements to consider when citing a source, however you try to structure that, and to train you how to think about the very nature of the sources that you may be attempting to use to create a proof. 

There is a lot to learn from Elizabeth's momentous work, and as such, this latest edition, brought up to date within its 744 pages to reflect the ever changing range of resources becoming available for our research, is an invaluable addition to the genealogist's bookshelf. 

Evidence Explained is available to buy from the Genealogical Publishing Company at https://genealogical.com/store/evidence-explained-4th-edition/; the book is available in both print and ebook formats.

(With thanks to the Genealogical Publishing Company for a review copy)

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

David Dobson's Irish Emigrants in North America - Consolidated Edition review

The latest consolidated edition of books from Dundee based historian David Dobson has been released by Clearfield Company through the Genealogy Publishing Company. The volume, at 835 pages in length, is entitled Irish Emigrants in North America: Consolidated Edition Parts One to Ten, and, as suggested, brings together ten volumes on the topic, as originally published between 1994 and 2020.

There were several waves of migration from Ireland to the American colonies, to the West Indies, and to Canada. These included Irish prisoners transported to the colonies by Cromwell in the 17th century, as well as those who deliberately placed themselves in the position of indentured servants, as a means to seek an easier passage to a new life. There were over 200,000 'Scotch-Irish' who migrated from the north of Ireland from the early 18th century, descendants of predominantly Lowland Scots who had migrated as colonists to Ireland in the previous century, and of course, the largely Roman Catholic 'Famine Irish', those fleeing from An Gorta Mór in the mid-19th century on board 'coffin ships' (although some Catholic Irish had already travelled to settle in places such as Maryland, long before this).  

In David's books, he has sifted through and indexed entries from a range of primary and secondary sources, such as the British Parliamentary Papers, the Irish House of Lords papers, newspapers, the national archives of Scotland (NRS), England/UK (TNA), Denmark, the USA and Canada, local archives at home, and in Canada and the USA, muster rolls, prisoner lists, university and library records, and much, much more. Each person's entry provides a brief summary of any genealogical information found, and details of their migration.

The books themselves are produced as facsimile reproductions of the original volumes, and so you will find that the layout of each varies slightly, and some archival resources will be listed under their former names, e.g. the 'Public Record Office' instead of 'The National Archives'. Helpfully though, there is a new consolidated name index for all ten volumes, as compiled by Jana Broglin, and new pagination for the 835 pages included, meaning that you only have to turn to p.765, for example, rather than a specific page number in Volume 10.

The books are, of course, not complete - there are plenty more sources out there! - but if you have not started with David's works, you have missed a very obvious starting point, and as such, this volume is yet another useful finding aid worthy of addition to the bookshelf of any Irish genealogist.   

The book is available to buy from the Genealogical Publishing Company at https://genealogical.com/store/irish-emigrants-in-north-america-consolidated-edition-parts-one-to-ten/, priced at USD $85.

(With thanks to Joe Garonzik at the GPC for a supplied review copy)

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Review - David Dobson's Scots-Irish Links: Consolidated Edition

For almost four decades, Scots based genealogist David Dobson has been valiantly plundering the archives to create finding aids for names of individuals from various Scottish linked communities, all dutifully published by the Genealogical Publishing Company (https://genealogical.com) for Clearfield Company in the US. These range from lists of Scottish emigrants and Scots banished to the American plantations, to lists of settlers in specific areas, such as Inverness in Scotland to the Carolinas in the US, or to early settlers in the American colonies.  

One community in particular that David has been meticulously documenting since 1994 has been the Scots who travelled to Ireland to permanently settle, or who moved back and forth across the Sheuch between Ireland and Scotland. Often referred to today as the 'Ulster Scots', or in the US as the 'Scotch-Irish', it is a sometimes simplistic narrative that states that these Scots settled in Ireland just prior to and during the Plantations of the early 1600s, and then moved on to the American colonies as a result of the discrimination imposed upon them through the Penal Laws, or through the desire for economic opportunities overseas. Many of these earlier Ulster Scots were Scots who went to Ulster during the Plantations (and beyond in Ireland), who died there or who returned fairly soon after to Scotland, as a consequence of the troubles of the 1640s, and through subsequent religious persecution. But there were several other waves of emigration to Ireland from Scotland to replenish their numbers, with many choosing to settle there after the Williamite Wars concluded in the late 17th century, into the period of Ireland's membership of the UK, and beyond the point of the island's Partition in 1921. Many of their descendants moved on from Ulster and Ireland, some regularly travelled and traded between Scotland and Ireland, whilst others even returned to live in Scotland (this reviewer being just one such Ulster Scot and equally proud Irishman!).

The point is that there were a lot of them, forming many different communities wherever and whenever they settled, whether in Ireland or the US, or even returning to Scotland and playing a part back there, and David has been on their trail for a long time. Through a series of publications entitled Scots-Irish Links, he has meticulously plundered the national repositories in Scotland, Ireland and England, universities and more localised archival holdings, as well as published secondary sources, to produce definitive lists in alphabetical order of those he has found, noting their names, brief descriptions of who they were, and where to find the original documents describing them. It's a Herculean effort that has been nothing short of heroic.

The main problem with these publications, if there ever was one, is that there were a fair few of them! Some libraries may hold a few copies, some may even be available online, but a complete collection has not always been an easy thing to find – until now. This new Scots-Irish Links Consolidated Edition covering the period from 1575-1825 is an absolute beast of a thing, comprised of two heavy volumes, each with over 900 pages, providing a faithful facsimile reproduction of all the relevant editions within a single genealogical gem. Most handily, each volume has a new general index to all of the editions hosted within (compiled by Jana Broglin), making it a much easier job to find the names that may be of interest for your research. As if that was enough, just for good measure, the author has also produced additional and unique content specifically for this edition, making it therefore the definitive and complete version (at least for now!). This update is comprised of Scots-Irish Links 1825-1900 Part 2, and Addendum to Scots-Irish Links 1725-1825, adding about a fifth of the second volume's content.

The following is how each volume is broken down:

Volume 1: Scots-Irish Links 1575-1725, Parts 1-8  (936 pages)

Volume 2: Scots-Irish Links 1575-1725, Parts 9-11; Later Scots-Irish Links 1725-1825, Parts 1-3; Scots-Irish Links 1825-1900, parts 1-2; Addendum to Later Scots-Irish Links 1725-1825  (910 pages)
 

The following are some typical entries that can be found:

GRAHAM, THOMAS, was granted Irish denization on 12 February 1618 [IPR]

WYLIE, JOHN, a Merchant of Belfast, was admitted as a burgess and guilds-brother in Ayr on 9 April 1718 [ABR]

MCCUTCHEON, WILLIAM, master of the bark Friends Adventure of Belfast, trading between Irvine and Belfast, 1686, and of the William and Jean of Belfast, a bark, trading between Irvine and Belfast, 1688 [NAS.E72.12.13/15]

(IPR = Irish Patent Roll; ABR = Ayr Burgess Roll; NAS = National Archives of Scotland, now the NRS)


I can see this being immensely useful for those carrying out research between Scotland and Ireland, and have already discovered some new leads into my own ancestral research of the Montgomery family of the small County Antrim town of Larne in the mid-18th century. I had previously established from research at PRONI that a John Montgomery from Larne was involved in shipping passengers to the American colonies in the 1770s, in partnership with a Malcolm McNeill in the town, but from David's books I have now found entries from Scottish records of two other ship-owning members of the Montgomery family from Larne in the previous decade, a William and Robert, who will undoubtedly be related. And that is just the first surname I have looked up – there's a fair few more to get stuck into.
 
If you're interested in Scottish history, Irish history, or Scotch-Irish history, this epic set is an absolute essential for your genealogical library. The books can be purchased individually at US$90 each from the Genealogical Publishing Company, or as a set for US$165 at https://genealogical.com/store/scots-irish-links-1525-1825-consolidated-edition-in-two-volumes/. Very highly recommended.

(With thanks to Joe Garozik at the Genealogical Publishing Company for the review copy)

Chris 

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Sharing Your Family History Online - first reviews

I've just come across the first reviews of my next book, Sharing Your Family History Online, on the Pen and Sword website. The first is from a Helen Cota:

Chris Paton has written many books about how to research your family history. His previous books have mostly concentrated on how to build your family tree, how to get more information. In Sharing Your Family History Online, he shifts the focus to taking your discoveries and sharing them with others.

 

Of course you can put everything you want onto the internet and let the world sort through it. But Paton shows you the benefits of considering who you want your audience to be, what you want to tell them, and how and where you can best accomplish your goals. He outlines websites and formats, walks you through choosing a blogging platform, and alternatives to blogs such as videos or podcasts. He also explains copyright and privacy concerns, and although his audience is primarily in the United Kingdom, the principles also apply to the United States and other countries. Just be sure to check the copyright and privacy laws in your own jurisdiction.

 

The book is not long (144 pages with illustrations) but it is packed with information and ideas. He includes a substantial section on the ins and outs of DNA testing and results. He shares advice about how to respond to those who contact you once you've put your family history out there. He's very candid about both the potential benefits and pitfalls of sharing your work online. This is an excellent resource for any family historian.

And another shorter one from Stephanie Maines

 

I want to thank NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book. As a genealogist for over 30 years, I found the information information very useful. Most of the links provided were from the UK, but the information was still very valuable. I will be purchasing this book for my library.

 

The official publicaiton date is January 31st, which basically means at some stage this month. In the meantime, you can pre-order a copy at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Sharing-Your.../p/18718 - I hope it helps!

(With thanks to Helen and Stephanie) 

Chris

Pre-order my next book, Sharing Your Family History Online, at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. My book Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.