Even now when most research is done online, it can be a daunting and time consuming task. That's why it's good to have a goal in mind. That's why those searching for their family's history are advised to come up with research questions; something to shape their queries, something to tell them when they've reached their goal. Because you can't get there if you don't know where "there" is.
It's good advice but something I rarely do, although I probably should. I'm more likely to head in a general direction then get distracted along the way. Perhaps that's not the best practice for uncovering information about my ancestors' pasts but it can lead to some interesting discoveries. Many of those treasures being found by following those tantalizing facts just out of reach occasioned by intriguing finds that sent me off on a tangent to find out more about some event, place or person.
But perhaps I do follow the advice about setting a question in a way. Because I usually have a mystery that I want to solve when I embark on a new line of discovery. When I think about my current Acadian research, there are a few mysteries that I would like to solve. The main one, of course, is how the families I am interested in ended up back in Nova Scotia after the mass deportation in 1755. But there is another. How did the family of French Acadians that I'm interested in end up with the very Scottish sounding name McPhee?
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