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Advanced Genealogical Methods
Same Name, Same Person? Why “Close Enough” Isn’t Proof
You’ve found him. John Smith, the right age, in the right county, in the right decade. It feels like a match, and it’s tempting to attach the record and move on.
But what if there were two John Smiths in that county? What if the man you found is a cousin, a neighbor, or a stranger who happened to share a common name? Every experienced genealogist has a story about a family tree built on the wrong person, and those mistakes tend to multiply, copied from tree to tree for generations.
A matching name is a hypothesis, not a conclusion. Turning a hypothesis into proof is the core skill of Advanced Genealogical Methods.
From information to evidence to proof
Records don’t hand us answers. They hold information, and it’s the researcher who turns that information into evidence and then into a conclusion. The course starts there, with how advanced genealogists think about the research process, write focused research questions and plans, and correlate many sources while resolving the conflicts between them.
A full session focuses on questions of identity: how to tell whether two records describe the same person, and how to separate people merged into one.
When the records you need don’t exist
Few ancestors lived in places with complete records. Courthouses burned, records were never created, and some populations, including many women, left only faint traces in the usual sources. This course is built for those problems. Sessions cover overcoming record loss, mastering indirect and negative evidence (what records suggest, and what their silence reveals), tracing migrations that left no clear trail, and identifying female ancestors.
Sources most researchers never open
The week also goes deep into records that can break a stalled case: federal land records, military pension and bounty land files, government documents such as the Congressional Serial Set and private acts of Congress, manuscript collections in archives, and the ways land, tax, and probate records work together to reveal relationships. A session on the law shows why those records were created, and why our ancestors acted as they did.
DNA, handled with rigor
Two sessions focus on advanced DNA methods: genetic networks, planning targeted testing, and the reasoning that ties genetic and documentary evidence together into one argument.
Writing it down so it lasts
A conclusion that lives only in your head can’t be checked or built on. The course closes the loop with sessions on citing unfamiliar sources and writing genealogy, from proof arguments to reports to family histories, so your findings stand as a credible record for the researchers who come after you.
Optional daily homework lets you practice what you’ve learned, with a review the next morning.
Join us
Advanced Genealogical Methods runs January 25–29, 2027, as part of the virtual Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. Bring your own toughest case, and learn to solve it from home.