Do you ever find yourself so engrossed in researching those 6th and 7th generation brick walls that you overlook documenting earlier generations with obvious sources? That’s what I’ve found to be true with my research.

I recently read the post, 7-gen-1-sheet that suggests using a spreadsheet of ancestors to look at one’s data in a different manner. Thus, I decided to look at the sources I’ve attached to death facts to see whether I have sourced an obituary and their Find a Grave site.

See all of that red? Needless to say, I’ve failed! A few of these don’t have known death dates/locations – but I’ve been to some of the other graves shaded red.

Before shading the 7th generation, I’m going to try and turn more of these yellow.

To start turning the red to yellow, I started by checking the burial fact . For many of these 6th generation ancestors, I had attached the Find a Grave source to the burial fact but not to the death (or birth) fact. Thus, I simply had to memorize the source on the burial fact and paste it onto the death fact. That simple task changed a lot of the red to green.

For those still shaded red, I do not know a death date or place. Thus, they will likely remain shaded red until such time that I can verify their death date and place.

I doubt I would have ever gone back to update these death facts if I hadn’t looked at my data in this way.