Thursday, March 15, 2007

Randy's Search for Cornelia Bresee

Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings has created an index to his posts on his search for Cornelia Breese and her ancestors.

He is attempting to identify the parents of Cornelia Bresee who was born 5 December 1780 in New York. Cornlia married James Bell about 1797 in Schodack, Rensselaer County, New York according to records held by family members. They resided in Henderson township, Jefferson County, New York from about 1810 to their deaths in 1839/40.

Randy is documenting the searches he has done on various websites; providing information on the searches themselves as well as the results, and doing an excellent job of it. I highly recommend this series of posts. For beginners it is a very good "tutorial" on the research process itself and for those who have been "doing genealogy" for a while, it's an extremely good refresher course. There are a lot of new resources on the internet that have recently been made available and Randy seems to be covering the bases very well. I know I've gotten some good tips from him and he has highlighted some resources that I wasn't aware of. It doesn't matter that his search is for someone from New York... the basic process and sites searched can easily be applied to other surnames and geographical areas.

Of course, his posts serve a dual purpose for him by creating a research log for where he's searched and what he's found. A lesson there as well - keep track of what you've done and found, whether the result was positive or negative! Another side-benefit could be if he makes contact via his blog posts with other descendants or others researching the Bresee surname.

Thank you Randy!

1 comment:

Randy Seaver said...

You are very welcome.

You hit the nail on the head - it is a research log of sorts and also a tutorial. Did you notice that I reordered the "to-do" list the other day so the flow is a little more logical?

I enjoyed your grandmother's life story too - many of our folks did not have it easy, especially the women. I appreciate every one of them!