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Presenter: Emily Garber

Genealogy research documents our families, determines identities of our forgotten or unknown relatives, and reconstructs relationships. But the records we seek do not always cooperate. Records may be wrong. Records may lie. After the excitement of our early research, it may become more difficult to locate our quarry. Identifying relatives in records may require understanding how, why and under what circumstances particular records were created. How did our relatives interact with record-generating entities? We may have to creatively out-smart incorrect information in records by corroborating or clarifying with information from other sources. It can get complicated. This talk will discuss research challenges presented in case studies in U.S. records and explain procedures for gathering, evaluating and analyzing evidence of our relatives' lives. If we master the techniques of record and evidence analyses in our present country, it will prepare us for more challenging research in the Old Country.