How I Planned a Research Trip

Image: rawpixel

 

As with all trips, planning is key to success. While flying by the seat of your pants or "going with the flow" is one thing on a vacation, planning can make or break your genealogy research trip. 

The Hubs gifted me with a solo research trip last Christmas but it took me a while to settle on where I wanted to go. I ultimately chose western New York and St. Catharines, Ontario, as these ancestral locales were close to each other. I had also spent alot of time in the past few years researching the many ancestors who lived in that area and the research was relatively fresh in my mind. It was time to see these places for myself!

I started planning in May and decided on three localities to focus on: 

• Sheldon, Wyoming Co., New York
• Buffalo, Erie Co., New York
• St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. 

Not only were these cities home to my ancestral families, but they also were home to various churches, cemeteries, libraries, and museums that I wished to visit. The bonus was that none were more than a 45-minute drive from Buffalo, my home base for the visit.

 

Planning Spreadsheet 

To begin planning, I created a Google Sheets spreadsheet. 

My spreadsheet had the following tabs:

• Places to Visit—Here I added visiting hours, fees, directions, etc., for various libraries, museums, and historical societies I wanted to visit.
• Schedule—On this tab, I arranged, rearranged, and rearranged again which city and repository I was visiting each day. Some—such as the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village—were open limited days/hours each week. Others—like the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre—were open every day, giving me more flexibility with when I visited.
• Cemeteries—I had a specific tab to keep track of all the graves I wanted to visit and their locations within the cemeteries, if I knew them. I planned to ask cemetery staff for missing grave locations ahead of time.
• To Ask/Find Out—On this tab, I collected specific questions as they occurred to me during the planning process or noted things I wanted to check at each repository. For example, I wanted ask the libraries if they had surname or vertical files I could check.
• Libraries—I noted here specific books from the libraries' online catalogs of books I wanted to look at on my trip. (And here's a DON'T for you: I completely forgot about this tab and did not look at the books I wanted to. Drats!)

Part of my schedule in the planning spreadsheet.

Scheduling Visits 

I looked at the schedule and entered the sites with limited hours on those dates on the spreadsheet. For example, I had a contact at the Town of Sheldon Historical Society (Hi, Jeanne!) who was available to meet with me on Friday, 7/ 11, and entered that into the calendar. Then I added the sites with more flexibility around any inflexible dates. 

I also tried to group sites that were near each other on the same day.  For example, the St. Catharines Public Library, where the Ontario Genealogical Society's collection was held, was right across the street from the Cathedral of St. Catharine of Alexandria, which I also wanted to visit. Those both got plugged into the same day. I did the same with a museum and library in Buffalo, with an historical society, church, and cemetery in Sheldon, etc.

 

Utilizing Contacts 

I'm not shy about reaching out to staff of libraries, museums, or genealogy societies to ask for help with trip planning. I had accumulated a list of area repositories in the past and had been in contact with many of their staff in the past few years. It was easy to reintroduce myself to confirm visiting times, ask questions, and make arrangements to meet. 

Everyone I contacted was ready and willing to help me...some even came in on their day off to accommodate my visit. Both the Wyoming County (NY) Historian's Office and the St. Catharines Museum & Welland Canals Centre pulled numerous books and files which were waiting for me when I visited and had staff available to assist me. The cemetery staff at Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines provided maps and grave locations when I visited there, greatly streamlining my visit. These are just a few of the many kindnesses shown me on my trip that helped make it successful. 

Before the trip, I considered how I would save any documents I would find. In the past I've used a thumb drive or external drive. This time, I decided to use a phone app called Genius Scan (Available for free at the App Store or Google Play). It's super easy to use and I was carrying my phone anyway, so it was convenient. I made sure to ask the repositories ahead of time whether photographing, scanning, etc., was permitted.

 

Image: rawpixel

 

During the Visit 

No matter how much preparation you do, it can still be jarring to drive around an unfamiliar city. It was for me. Thank goodness for GPS! I usually looked up direction and parking information the night before my travels and saved driving directions as a shortcut on my phone. It was then quick and easy to connect to the car's navigation system to display the directions I needed the next morning.

Image: rawpixel

 

I took my laptop with me each day. I connected to wifi or use my mobile hotspot wherever I was to access my Airtable research logs or to take a quick look at my Ancestry tree, etc. I also made sure to charge my laptop each night so it was ready for the next day.

Each evening I went through my laptop case to remove any brochures, books, or files that I collected that day. In the morning, I ate a good breakfast, loaded up my laptop, and made sure I had a bottle of water and a few non-perishable snacks.

 

The Two "Scariest" Aspects of the Trip

Only two things struck "terror" into my heart about this trip: Crossing the border into Canada from New York and parking in downtown Buffalo! These seem like silly concerns now that I've done both of them, but the apprehension forced me to prepare.

In terms of crossing the border, I updated my expired passport. I read up on driving in Canada and learned that rental car companies would have special non-citizen insurance cards for visitors to keep in their car. I made a note to ask for that at the rental car desk at pickup.

Fortunately for me, I happened to chat with a staff member at the Wyoming County Historian's Office and she pointed out a few things about crossing the border. One was that there would be a toll on the Canadian side and I might need cash for that (I got cash, but they did take credit cards.) She also advised changing my phone's roaming settings or my GPS might not work in Canada. (This did happen but I knew how to fix it. Thank you, Stacie!)

I'm a bit apprehensive about driving around an unfamiliar city, so knowing I had to find parking in downtown Buffalo had me a little panicked. I planned to get to the city as early as possible to beat the weekday rush, and it worked. Plenty of spaces.

Each day of my trip was full of activity and by the late afternoon, I was usually spent! But it was a "good tired," earned by productive research and the great gift of seeing all these places my ancestors called home. I met many wonderful people who shared so much with me and put faces to names of many folks I had previously met only through email or Facebook. What a great trip!

 

A Few More Tips

• Don't plan to visit any sites on your travel day. I had two awful travel days, with hours-long delays in flights, outlandish wait times at rental car counters, etc. Both coming and going took the entire day when on paper it was supposed to take half that. If I had planned to research on travel days, I would have lost out.   
• Scan or photograph the cover, title page, and publication information before the pages of interest in books. This will make it easy to identify which pages belong to which book and you will have everything you need for a proper citation.
• Talk to the locals! The local staff, volunteers, and distant cousins I met during my trip shared a wealth of information with me. I got family photos, book recommendations, local history tidbits, ice cream recommendations (!), directions, border crossing advice, and so much more by talking to the local folks I met. They made my trip so much more enjoyable and productive and I can't thank them enough.  
• Include an unscheduled day. Leave a day or two open for those "fly by the seat of your pants" activities. Sunday and Tuesday were these days during my trip. Hardly any of the places I wanted to visit were open on Sunday, so I decided to drive to North Evans that morning to look around at where my Sheridan family lived. and then I took myself to Niagara Falls in the afternoon, just for fun. Tuesday was accidentally an unscheduled day as the visit I had hoped to make to another library fell through due to staff illness. Instead, I pivoted to spend more time at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library as I was only able to scratch the surface of the collection there when I visited earlier in my week.

Enjoying my "off" day at Niagara Falls.

 

• Scan the shelves. While you might have your "wish list" of items to see at a library, save some time to scan the shelves. You never know what might catch your eye. You don't know what you don't know!
• Process materials immediately. Once you return to your hotel room or after your trip, take time to process what you've collected as soon as possible while your memory is fresh. And create your citations!
• Take post it notes. I used a post it note for a KM to MPH cheat sheet to post on my dashboard so I could set my cruise control accordingly while in Canada!

My U.S. to Canada speed "cheat sheet."

 

Until next time...

© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2025. All rights reserved.