Lesson Overview

We discussed in Lesson 2 the fact that political boundaries often change over time. As a result, it is important for you to be aware of jurisdictional changes because they influence where records were created, why they were created, where they were initially held, and where you will search for them now. Remember that not everything has been digitized and placed online on the Internet; the vast majority of records are still held in the repositories in the place where they were originally created. As a result, you have to become a student of history and geography in order to track the jurisdictional changes in order to be successful in locating the evidentiary records you want and need for your research. The focus of this lesson is on how to determine the right place to look for the records. You will also want to view the video on this site titled “Genealogy Orienteering” for a strong methodology for using maps.

Lesson Objectives