Experiment with these seven techniques for gathering and analyzing ancestral evidence—you'll see how forensics can crack your toughest family history cases.
Watching Gil Grissom, Catherine Willows and the other science-savvy crime fighters on TV's “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” you might see little in common between their ultra-modern evidence gathering methods and your old-school ways of doing family history detective work. After all, what on earth would a genealogist do with a petri dish, other than use it to store paper clips?
If you go beyond the test tubes and microscopes, however, the connection's clear: Whether you're solving a casino murder or searching for Great-great-grandma's burial site, it's important to think analytically, use all the tools at your disposal and let the evidence tell the story.
By taking a cue from those “CSI” sleuths—in other words, adopting a “forensic” approach to family history—you can uncover amazing clues to your past. That's the tactic I've taken in my research, and it's helped me find intriguing ancestral insights, sometimes in odd places. My investigations have led me to study 150-year-old weather records, 1910 Model T sales, the history of bearded ladies in the circus and other unlikely sources.