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Sunday, June 30, 2013

Formulating Some Research Questions

So far, this blog has accumulated posts of sources that contain information about my ancestor's lives. This effort has not been focused towards specific goals. The broad goal has been to create a timeline for William C. Sharp's life.
Mastering Genealogical Proof [1] instructs us that the first step in genealogical research is to formulate questions.  The questions should be focused enough that answers are attainable with a "reasonably exhaustive" search of existing records.
As a "first pass", this list of questions regarding the life and kin of William C. Sharp, will frame my research going forward:
  1. Was William C. Sharp, who lived in Livingston County, Kentucky from 1870 until his death in 1884, the same person as W.C. Sharp who lived in Pope County, Illinois from about 1855 until 1869?
  2. Was W.C. Sharp who lived in Pope County, Illinois from about 1855 to 1869, the same person as William Sharp who appears in the 1850 U.S. census for Rising Sun, Ohio County, Indiana?
  3. Who was the adult female, Delilah Sharp, appearing in the William Sharp household in the 1850 U.S. census for Rising Sun, Ohio County, Indiana? What was their relationship? If she was his wife, when and where did they marry?
These questions are rather narrowly focused, but proving answers to them will lay a solid foundation for future work.

Reference Notes:

1 Thomas W. Jones, Mastering Genealogical Proof (Arlington, Virginia: National Genealogical Society, 2013), 7. [Book available from publisher at: www.ngsgenealogy.org.]