A piece of genealogical research advice  I have heard many times over the years is that when you can’t find information on someone, check for siblings and start researching there.

This is great advice, but how can we be sure if there even were siblings.  Well, sometimes we get lucky and know based on our research that yes person x had a brother and sister.  Are there any other siblings that have not been found yet?  We can sometimes find clues that siblings exist and we just need to track them down.

For my research in Germany, I have the great fortune of having ancestors listed in a parish book with the number of previous children, and which son/daughter number the individual was.  This makes life slightly easier when creating timelines for a family.

Kenneth L. Smith’s book German Church Books: Beyond the Basics discusses the value of finding all the siblings and where to look in vital records.