Filed under Photographs and Personal Papers: A Method Guide
Where should you start looking?
Neither wins automatically: official records fix dates and units, while personal papers supply experience and detail. When they disagree, note the disagreement and look for a third source rather than discarding one.
The strongest first check is a boring one: does every filter agree, or does only one agree and the rest stay silent? A record set arranged by unit will not yield to a surname search, and a record set arranged by date will not yield to a unit search. Learn the arrangement first.
How to read this kind of entry
The order of sheets in a file is not always the order of events. Rebuild the date order yourself, and do not trust filing order to do it for you. A record that names several people should be read for all of them, not just for yours. The others are what prove, or break, the identification. A name entered in a different hand, or in different ink, may have been added later, for a later purpose. Ask when an entry was made, not only what it says.
What are the common dead ends?
If the dates you have are approximate, say so, and search a range rather than a single year. A record filed under a neighbouring year is a common miss. If the trail ends at a particular holder, the next step is to ask that holder where the record went, not to search the same catalogue harder.
A dead end shared by many researchers is usually a coverage problem, not a personal one. The research guides for that record type will often say so plainly. A local archive, a museum, and a national catalogue hold different pieces of the same story, and none of them alone is the whole story.
The order to work in
The steps below assume you have already fixed the person, the number, and the dates as far as you can. If you have not, do that first, and then return. If a step fails three times with three different filters, stop and change the record type. Persistence with one record type past three failures is rarely rewarded.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Describe the item itself first: what it shows, what it says, and what marks it carries. |
| 2 | Date the item from its own clues, uniform, badge, format or handwriting, before attaching it to a person. |
| 3 | Use the dated item to frame a record search, unit, place or date, rather than as a substitute for one. |
| 4 | Note the item reference and where it is held, so the next researcher can find it. |
What should you check next?
Move from personal records to unit records, or from unit records back to personal ones, deliberately. Each direction answers a different kind of question. Work the chain one link at a time. A timeline built link by link can be checked; a timeline built by jumping to the most interesting record cannot. Stop at the record that answers the question, and note the reference before moving on.
Primary sources for this guide
This guide keeps its claims general and points to the official holders, so the holder itself is the place to check the current position. It is general educational information only, not personal professional advice, and it offers no record lookup service and no determination of any individual's service.