🇺🇸 Lene Kottal Professional Genealogy Contact Lene Kottal

The WANDER Research Method by Amy Johnson Crow

Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®
The WANDER Research Method by Amy Johnson Crow

WikiTree held a symposium and WikiTree Day online event in 2022. I watched some of the presentations and want to highlight one of them: Amy Johnson Crow's presentation Finding Ancestors Without Going in Circles: The WANDER Research Method.

I like the WANDER research method, which was developed my Amy Johnson Crow. The method is similar to the research procedure I strive to follow, namely the one recommended in Genealogy Standards, 2nd edition (Washington, DC: Board for Certification of Genealogists, 2019). Furthermore, WANDER is an acronym, which makes it easier to remember the steps:

What do you want to find?
Analyze what you already have
Note what is missing
Discover new records
Evaluate everything
Repeat as necessary

Where to Learn about the WANDER Method

You can read about the WANDER research method at Amy Johnson Crow's website. In her post about the method, Amy includes a link to an episode of her Generations Café Podcast, where she talks about the method. You also have the option of signing up for Amy's newsletter to receive a printable document, so you have the method handy if you need to be reminded of the steps.

 

Source References:
The photo at the top was taken by my my father. It shows me when I was ten months old. I am not sure that pushing around a baby walker qualifies as wandering, but I am sure I was examining and analyzing everything on my way - like we do as genealogists.

Share this article
share on Facebook share on Twitter
Family history based on old bills, receipts, and letters

Family history based on old bills, receipts, and letters

Old bills and letters can help tell our ancestors' family history. My grandmother Jenny Kirstine (Juhl) Hansen rarely threw away paperwork, which means we have a lot of documents that reveal details about the family's life. In this blog post, I share the information I gleaned from a change of address notification, a lease agreement, a bill, some receipts, and a letter from the municipality. All of this is tied into my mother's memories of the family's relocation from downtown Odense to the suburb of Bolbro in 1954.

by
Memoirs about Christmas in the 1860s – Danish Family History

Memoirs about Christmas in the 1860s – Danish Family History

Danish Christmas traditions have changed over the years. Furthermore, regional differences in the celebrations existed and still do. Even if your Danish ancestor did not write their memoirs, you might still be able to get an idea of their traditions. Someone else from the same time and area might have written their memoirs, such as Niels Peder Grønvald Nielsen of Ryslinge.

by
Donations to the Poor During Christmas 1774

Donations to the Poor During Christmas 1774

In this blog post you can get a glimpse of Danish Christmas history on the basis of a newspapers from Copenhagen in 1774.

by