24 April 2013

Charting Peter Bieger in 1850

Charts are very popular genealogical research tools.

With that in mind, I'm posting an image that was used in Casefile Clues a while back. This chart is a starting point to organizing my search. The problem was that I was having difficulty finding Peter Bieger in the 1850 census. In order to search for him effectively, I used several different websites that index the 1850 census. However, looking at the same entry over and over got a little tedious.

To keep track, I started with a simple chart as shown below. I didn't include links to the specific website's image. What I was concerned about was the dwelling and the family number (along with the State, County, and Town/City) as that would be on the census page regardless of what website I was using



I could easily add columns for this chart--the best one to add would be a comments column for "why" I rejected this person as being the Peter Bieger of interest. If you do not track why a certain person was rejected, it is difficult to go back and analyze again if assumptions change about the person of interest.

I still have not found Peter in 1850, but the chart at least helps me track what I have done.