| How Jeff Used the 5-Step Research Process |
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| Step 1: Write down what you know. |
Greg started with the research his sister, Marie, had already done. His family had always believed that the Spacher family came from Germany and settled in Rochester, New York. His family was Catholic and were part of the parish at St. Joseph's Church in Rochester. |
| Step 2: Decide what you want to learn. |
Greg set an objective to find the children born in the mid-1800s to his great-great-grandfather, Jean Spacher. |
| Step 3: Choose a source of information. |
Greg believed that baptismal records of St. Joseph's Church in Rochester might hold the information he hoped to find. |
| Step 4: Learn from the source. |
In the baptismal records at St. Joseph's, Greg found the children's dates of birth and baptism, parents' names, and best of all, the place of origin for both parents! Greg found that the place of origin for his great-great-grandfather, Jean Spacher, was in the Moselle region of France, not in Germany. This discovery led him through the five step process several more times, using mostly church records, until he was able to find ten generations of Spachers, five in France and five in the U.S. |
| Step 5: Use what you learned. |
Once he found the information, Greg contacted his French cousins in the village of Haute Vigneulles, where his 6th great-grandfather settled in 1690 and his 5th great-grandfather was born. Greg planned a visit to meet his newly discovered French cousins. He prepared large charts that contained all of the names of the descendants and took them to France to give to his cousins at the joyful reunion. He was the first American to return to the village. |
