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Do you ever have a research question that requires you to explore a large number of families to attempt to piece together the answer?
In this video, we’re going to talk about how you can data mine a record collection to answer your genealogy research questions.
With the DataMiner.io extension for Chrome browsers, you can extract large quantities of data at the click of a button. You’re not going to want to miss this tutorial.
A Case Study of Data Mining a Genealogy Research Question
Genealogy research begins with a quality research question. While researching John and Hannah Long of Lawrence, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, I had two questions:
“United States Census, 1850,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M4H3-MWK : 12 April 2016), John Long, Lawrence, Clearfield, Pennsylvania, United States; citing family 214, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
Who is Martha Welch?
Where is their infant son, William Lester Long?
There are 28 pages of Lawrence, Pennsylvania census records in 1850, with about 40 names per page. Processing all of that data involves a lot of painstaking effort, OR you can data mine the genealogy record set.
Watch this video to learn how to create a Data Miner recipe to extract this information on FamilySearch. You can apply the same principles to each genealogy website you need to investigate.
↪️ Are you looking for more genealogy resources?
Grab these FREE Genealogy Research Guides.
After You Data Mine a Genealogy Record, It’s Time to Explore
The DataMiner.io tool extracts information, but you need to use a spreadsheet to analyze the information from your selected genealogy resource.
In the tutorial, I show how to extract the information into an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets. Then, you can begin manipulating the data by:
color coding clusters (in this case, households)
filtering individuals (by surname, by household number, etc.)
I don’t tell you how the story ends, but I do show you how to discover some cool historical and genealogical facts.
Give it a try, and let me know how it goes.
DataMiner is better understood via a video tutorial; check it out above.
Continue learning about data mining in this article 7 Best Real-Life Examples of Data Mining.