As a journalist and genealogist, I'm used to sticking to the facts. But when I'm hot on the trail of an ancestral story, my imagination kicks into high gear. Like every family researcher, I want to fill in the blanks that records can't. So I'll try to picture how my immigrant great-great-grandparents reacted when they stepped off the ship. Or what happened on a typical day in my grandfather's drugstore.

Sometimes, I'll even imagine how my forebears might answer my burning genealogical questions. Take, for example, my ancestors John and Melinda (Underwood) Stacy, who were mid-19th-century farmers in northern Ohio. According to a county history published in 1897, they had 13 children. A short biography gives substantial detail about John: He owned 80 acres, served as a school official and was a "valued resident" of the community. I wonder what Melinda might say about life on the old homestead …

Q. How did you manage all those kids?