{"id":2928,"date":"2016-06-29T00:54:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T00:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=2928"},"modified":"2016-06-29T00:54:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T00:54:38","slug":"four-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=2928","title":{"rendered":"Four Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today on her Facebook page for<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/evidenceexplained\/?fref=ts\">\u00a0<em>Evidence Explained<\/em>, Elizabeth Shown Mills<\/a>\u00a0posted a &#8220;thought prompt:&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Your Best Advice in Four Words or Less<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My contributions to the effort were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There&#8217;s always exceptions.<\/li>\n<li>No one knows everything.<\/li>\n<li>Break every rule once.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I stand by those. Others suggested the importance of the law, citing your sources, taking breaks, and other ideas that were similar to the three I posted.<\/p>\n<p>Then I thought of one more:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Follow the money.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It probably should say &#8220;follow the things worth money,&#8221; but that would have been too many words. Even though I suggested &#8220;breaking every rule once,&#8221; I decided to follow four words or less rule. There are many times when following the money is a good research strategy. How property was acquired, how property was sold, how estates were settled, how people supported themselves, and \u00a0answers to similar economic issues can solve some research problems. I have one ancestor who in his early twenties had enough cash to purchase nearly two hundred acres of real estate <em>sans<\/em> mortgage. That&#8217;s a question I wish I could answer\u00a0concretely instead of just putting forth some conjecture.<\/p>\n<p>Not every piece of advice solves every problem just like every tool will not solve every problem.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s ok to have four word rules.<\/p>\n<p>Just make certain to have more than four of them.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today on her Facebook page for\u00a0Evidence Explained, Elizabeth Shown Mills\u00a0posted a &#8220;thought prompt:&#8221; Your Best Advice in Four Words or Less My contributions to the effort were: There&#8217;s always exceptions. No one knows everything. Break every rule once. I stand by those. Others suggested the importance of the law, citing your sources, taking breaks, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}