If you got here because you Googled “genealogy FAN club,” you probably are embarking on a really fun stage of your genealogy research. At least I hope you are.
This post focuses on what a FAN club is. It covers:
- What the FAN acronym includes
- A basic "what cluster research is not"
- 3 reasons you want (need) a genealogy FAN club
[Synonyms for genealogy FANs or genealogy FAN club are "cluster research," "collateral research," "cluster genealogy," and "the FAN principle" or "FAN club principle." If that is what you're looking for, you're in the right place).]
This is the same idea as clustering DNA results but this is a MUCH older topic. It's a technique for traditional research, not genetic genealogy. This is actually one of the best ways to bust a genealogy brick wall, including if you pair it with genetic genealogy. But, if you're looking for information on auto-clustering DNA results, check out this post instead.
Ready to bust some genealogy brick walls ? Get out your FANs!
[If you know what a FAN club is but need some help getting started, check out this post.]
The FAN Acronym
So let’s start with the absolute basics. “FAN club” is an abbreviation coined by Elizabeth Shown Mills, CGSM to help genealogists remember this important concept for family history research. FAN is an abbreviation for Friends, Associates, and Neighbors. It’s probably such a popular term because it so adequately represents the concept. It’s an abbreviation but that group of people is also possibly your ancestor’s “fan club.”
This is not a new concept although the term FAN club isn’t an old term. In a nutshell, the FAN principle is researching those who interacted with your ancestor, whether related or not.
In this post, in addition to telling you what a FAN club is, I'll also be covering what a genealogy FAN club is not. I will use the terms FAN club and cluster research interchangeably in this post, so don't think there's some subtle meaning you're missing.
The FAN Club is The Genealogy Cluster
I have always been partial to the term cluster research. For me, it really illustrates what I need to do. I focus on my paternal research and that (so far---after 20+ years) is still mainly in two adjoining counties in north Georgia. When I need to employ the cluster technique, I need to focus on the cluster of people around the ancestor in question.
But that doesn’t mean that’s how the technique may work for you.
This is our first “what a genealogy FAN club is not.”
A genealogy FAN club is not, automatically, a physically close cluster of people.
Because of the characteristics of my ancestors, I am often researching people who live near my ancestor. In contrast, when I do cluster research for clients, I’m often looking across states. I’m usually looking across a large geographic area, in fact. But that’s because of the type of projects I tend to take professionally. Your research could be anywhere in between.
My point?
Different projects will have different needs. Your FAN club or cluster will look different for each.
You want to focus on researching your ancestor's FAN club. Don't try and duplicate what someone else has done (learn from them, don't copy them). Don't even expect to have the same experience between your own projects.
The Purpose of the FAN Club Principle
So let’s back it up and make sure the purpose of cluster research is clear. I’ve started with the “not” to help break any preconceived notions based on the words “cluster” and “fan club.”
- Cluster research is a technique used for “harder” genealogical research.
- Cluster research requires you research people besides your direct ancestors and even people who are unrelated.
Busting Brick Walls with FANs
The most common type of difficult problem where cluster research is used, is when there’s no direct evidence of who the parents of a person are. The FAN principle is also vital when dealing with conflicting evidence. A FAN club can also help if you need to determine who’s who when there are two people of the same or similar names. (Hint: sometimes conflicting evidence is because you've mixed up two people of similar names. Great that the same technique helps with both, right?)
Just as a note, I put "harder" in quotes in the list above because at some point, you're only doing harder research so you may need to use FANs for your everyday research. If you just started researching last week, you should capture the FANs but you don't need to worry about using them. If you naturally use them, great. But if you don't know what to do with them, just know they will be valuable later on. [I've split this post up, so learning how you can capture them, even if you don't know what to do with them, is covered in the follow-up post. There's also a link at the end of this post.]
Biographical Data (+ It's Uses) via FANs
Cluster research is often the only way to build biographical data about our ancestors' lives and that data is how we learn who a person is, instead of just being a name with a few random dates and places thrown in. Many people will have similar names, dates, and places. Deeper biographical data differentiates them.
Remember, cluster research is for harder problems. When research gets harder, we often know little about the research subject. We will have a name, which might not be consistent due to nicknames, initials, and spelling variations. We might only have a handful of vital dates, which are estimated. The places might be pretty good, as data goes, but how often can we tell all the records for that name belong to the man that came from North Carolina versus the one that has always lived here? (The answer is few, if any documents will differentiate people by location, and certainly not with the mix of locations that help define them).
For most people (not most people that researchers find interesting, but for most human beings who lived), they only appear as a name in a few records. Rarely is it clear which person of that name the record refers to. The best we usually get is knowing an adult of that name was living in that place at that date. How many other people fit that description? Often at least one, sometimes many.
Cluster research can be extremely effective in determining which records are about your research subject. But you must do a lot of FAN research (and be organized) to have useable information.
The biographical data comes from the ability to tell the person in a court record is your person of that name, not someone else of the same name or the person in a two line newspaper mention is yours. Determining if your John Smith is the one in the Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian church records builds what you know about your person. Determining if your guy served in the Army or Marines (via FANs) not only builds biographical knowledge, it lets you have confidence to order more records (ordering records can get expensive, you want to make sure they are for your person).
As a note, once you are able to build some biographical data, you can then try profiling as a research technique. These are so inter-related, I think of profiling as part of cluster research. If you have more biographical data, without cluster research, profiling can be a separate technique. (Not sure what profiling is? See mistake #3 in this post, although other parts of the post also relate to why you need cluster research).
Genealogy Off-Roading Requires a FAN Club
So we've looked at using FANs to bust brick walls, particularly when there are lots of people of the same name. By doing this we can build biographical data which is not only great for its own sake, it can help you find more records. But there's another major use of cluster research related to finding more records. I call this "off-roading."
I started using this term because I started students of with my free Brick Wall Solution Roadmap. Since it was a roadmap, I used the idea of getting off that road and trying another. I just mention this so you understand this is a concept, what it's called doesn't really matter. The visual of off-roading works well, though.
FANs provide alternative routes to the same information by opening up new research opportunities. They have their own records which we often need to find through them, even if they mention our person of interest (i.e. we can't identify the records by researching our person). Sometimes the off-road research doesn't mention our person but we use in-direct evidence to build our solution.
The simplest example of this is researching a sibling to find our ancestor's parents. A full-sibling has the same parents. We all know this and often this is the first type of off-roading we do (some genealogists have tunnel vision and can't get off their direct-evidence road--if that's you, you're going to get and stay stuck a lot. This is your wake up call that you have to go off-roading in genealogy).
If we find the brother's death certificate listing the parents, we've found the parents. However, this is in-direct evidence. The answer we found was not who are the parents of our person. The answer we found are who are the parents of the brother. Then we also have the answer (from a different source), that the person is the brother of our ancestor. It is an in-direct path from our ancestor to the parents (going through the brother).
Hard genealogy problems might only reach a solution by going through lots of different people. Those are FANs you have to research. You don't identify them because you know their records will lead you to your desired solution. You won't know that until you have found the solution. You identify them as FANs and your research skills help you decide who to research (if you research them at all).
You will research FANs that don't help your goal. You will research FANs where the research is more part of the background knowledge in your mind (the information that gives you ideas or "intuition"). In other words, you don't know which FANs you need and you will do some research that isn't helpful in the end and some that might not seem helpful but was and you just don't recognize it. You must make some wrong turns because you can't know the exact, unerring steps ahead of time.
You need a FAN club.
Convinced a FAN club will help you differentiate men of the same name, build biographical information, and even find alternative research avenues (it will!).
Great, how do you build the cluster?
I've moved this topic to a separate post so you don't end up exhausted from this topic (and in future, you could just review it, since you will already be convinced FAN club research is for you).
Learn the basics of capturing and organizing your FAN club in this follow-up post.
Cluster Research in a Nutshell
This has been a lot to take in so I'll sum it up.
- Record information about more than just your direct ancestors, this can be collateral lines or non-relatives. Remember the FANs (friends, associates, neighbors).
- Everyone should keep information about the siblings of their direct ancestors but keeping information about all friends, associates, and neighbors can give you a head start later.
A FAN club has three main uses.
- Helps you solve difficult problems, including questions of identity ("are these the same person?"), conflicting evidence (sometimes cause by confusing records from multiple people), and general brick walls by revealing more sources (see item 3 for this, as well).
- Helps build biographical data which can be used on its own or for genealogy profiling.
- Provides avenues for genealogy off-roading which can help you find more sources to use or find in-direct paths to the solution you're seeking
Want to learn more?
I've written a review about one of my favorite genealogy "QuickSheets" about the FAN club principal (The Historical Biographer's Guide to Cluster Research (the FAN Principle).
Learn the basics of capturing and organizing your FAN club in the follow-up post.
