Hunting down genealogical facts is one the most enjoyable part of genealogy.  Once you have found a genealogical document that you think fits into your tree, evaluating the document and pulling everything relevant then placing it in your tree can be a daunting task.  Speculating and just pure hoping that it is the correct family does not cut it.

In Val D. Greenwood’s The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, Chapter 7, Organizing and Evaluating  Research Findings, I was able to learn about how to make good notes, track what I was doing, and avoid duplicating work (as if I have time to do the same thing over and over again).  Simple ideas of keeping notes on the same size paper to using a calendar to record what was done when and what were the results are things I think of doing, but until I saw them in writing with clear explanations, I was not going down the efficient genealogical path in my genealogical hunt.