Write down the searches that fail

Most people keep careful notes on the records they find. Very few keep notes on the records they didn't find, and that's where a lot of wasted time in family history comes from.

Here's how it usually goes. You search a death index for a great-grandfather, find nothing, and move on. A year later, working on the same branch, you search the same index again. Still nothing, but now you aren't sure whether you tried that spelling or that county before. So you search again, with three more variations, just in case.

A negative result is a result

Genealogists call a search that finds nothing a "negative search," and it's real evidence. If a man who supposedly died in Ohio in 1915 isn't in the Ohio death index, that tells you something. Maybe he died somewhere else, or later, or under a different name. Maybe the index is incomplete for that county. Each of those possibilities points to a different next record.

But a negative search is only useful if you know exactly what you searched. "Checked Ohio deaths, nothing" isn't enough to rule anything out next year. You need to know which index, which years, which spellings and which counties.

What to write down

For each search that finds nothing, a short line covers it:

• The source: the name of the index, database or record set, and who provides it
• The scope: years and places covered
• What you searched: spellings, date ranges, places, any filters
• The date you searched

For example: "Ohio death certificate index, 1908-1932, state archives. Searched Kowalski, Kovalski, Kowalsky, all counties, 1910-1920. Nothing. March 4."

That takes thirty seconds and means you'll never have to wonder again.

Check the coverage

Before trusting a negative search, find out what the source covers. Indexes are often incomplete: a database labeled "1900-1950" might only include certain counties, or only the years someone has finished indexing so far. Collection descriptions usually say what's included. A search of an incomplete index proves much less than a search of a complete one, and your note should say which it was.

Let the gaps guide you

Once you have a list of what didn't work, patterns start to show. If your ancestor appears in every census up to 1910 and then in no death index anywhere, maybe he moved to a state you haven't checked, or maybe the family's story about where he died is wrong. A list of failures is often the best map of where to look next.

The research log on our homepage has a "Nothing" result option for exactly this reason. Each source line can hold what you searched and when, and the whole log exports as text you can keep with your other notes. If you're just starting out, our guide to getting started with family history covers the other habits worth building early.