Why writing is a good thing

Writing about your genealogy is usually an excellent idea. The reasons are numerous, but putting your research together so someone else understands it forces you to organize and revisit what you have already done. It also helps to point out omissions in our research.

While working on an article about ages, dates of birth, and dates of records, I realized I had never located two relatives in the 1870 census:

• James Rampley, born 1844 in Ohio, living in Adams or Hancock Counties in Illinois
• Sophia Trautvetter, born 1808 in Germany, probably living in Walker or Rocky Run Townships in Illinois.

They should not be too difficult to find and the difficulty is not really the issue. Research logs and research charts can help us find omissions in our research and we should use them. Writing about our research and our problems also can help us realize these oversights and they can also more importantly help us see gaps in our methods and our logic.