I used the phrase “paper neighbors” on an old Genealogy Tip of the Day and have to admit that I don’t follow upon paper neighbors as often as I should.

Geographic neighbors, located in census, property tax, and plat maps, are “in your face” as neighbors. The geographic proximity of these individuals to your ancestor should make it pretty clear that these are people (especially if they have the same last name as your ancestor) who should be researched.

Legal/Associate neighbors are those who appear in some legal or official capacity on a document in which your ancestor also appears. Witnesses, bondsmen, guardians, etc. who appear on your relative’s documents are people that need to be researched for potential additional connections.

Paper neighbors (which really isn’t a good term now that I think about it) are those individuals whose records appear in close proximity to your ancestor–on the same page, the prior or subsequent page, etc. They are also those individuals who may have gone the courthouse for the same function on the same day as your ancestor. The two men in the Tip of the Day reference were immigrants with allegiance to Queen Victoria who both naturalized at the Hancock County, Illinois, court on the same day in the 1870s. They were the only men who naturalized on that day. While that doesn’t prove anything by itself further research on the two men indicated that they were related to each other by marriage and were both Irish natives.

Sometimes neighbors aren’t always living across the street. “Record book neighbors” may be the biggest clues of all.