General Colonial Resources (Covering multiple states)
links to maps that are helpful with early American Migration
try American Ancestors for searching in New York and areas fed by New England. A full subscription is required to see the records but the index (which is available with a free account) lets you do name searches and returns helpful information.
EARLY AMERICAN RESEARCH / COLONIAL RESEARCH: What becomes more important:
Flexibility - whatever everyone thinks may be wrong. Keep an open mind. Sometimes stories are garbled or fabricated and people have told them so long nobody questions them. If all those trees all over the internet have parents but no records treat it as a hint.
Look critically at the “going knowledge.” Most early American families are represented in online trees. Everyone may be stuck in the same place but look multiple trees for people who may have something different. Notice these things:
Do they have any sources at all?
Do the sources that they have match the person? Are you sure they have the right Eliakim?
Have they made an effort to follow all the siblings? If this is hard research that may have been impossible. Drop down to the next (more known) generation and see if they did this later in the time period where it was possible
Are the geographic places reasonable? Do they have the right counties at the right time? If children are born in different places is it reasonable that they could have children born in those places?
Spelling is going to get more creative. There was no standardized spelling until after the American Revolution and when it came to surnames there was no dictionary. People spelled what they heard and the country was filled with dialects. Even people with means might not know "how to spell their name properly"
Naming patterns become more important than ever. In New England, most first sons and daughters were named after the parents. In Virginia and the south after grandparents. In the middle colonies, it might be either way but the names of those first children are strong clues.
Migration usually came in chunks. If your grandfather says born in New York and you find him on the 1820 census in Jefferson County do not assume that he was born there. His family quite likely migrated to an eastern county in New York and kept pushing westward.
State borders didn't mean much. if your family had a farm in "Washington County" Maryland in 1776 that covered all of Western Maryland and they had recently been in Frederick Co. Maryland before the boundary change. They could also leave records below them in the counties of northern Virginia or above them in the bordering counties of Pennsylvania.
Water and roads are everything. Look for historical maps that show rivers and history that tells you if they could navigate that river. Look for maps that show the early roads and see where they connected. Migration was costly and families often went somewhere for a few years and kept moving towards their goal.
Taxes and militia lists are tremendous help because men couldn't escape them! Even if you were excused your name might appear with that notation. They will be the finding aids that lead you to the correct deed book, probate, etc.
Try to see these lists in original form because they will provide cluster information. Both were drawn from neighborhoods. The names in that neighborhood will include various threads of your family.
You will have to build theories and test them. Find the group that seems most likely to have produced him based on cluster or other probabilities and try to prove or disprove that he fits with them. You may not be able to prove whose child he is but if you are in the right group you should see names you recognize or history that makes sense to his story.
Research in "bites". Start with things that are well indexed and look for your primary families. If you search the deed index save their entries by capturing the page or putting the index info in an excel document etc. where you will not lose it. Come back later and look for the actual documents. Don't get overwhelmed.
Keep good notes. Put anything useful on your timeline. Don't do work that you forget about later. Early American research is labor-intensive. That is why
Invest research time in gathering maps, looking at county histories, looking at archives and FamilySearch and Ancestry to make sure you know what is available and what is most accessible. Start with things that are easiest.
Try to get help in your DNA matches. If your test is at Ancestry and you suspect your family was in York County Pennsylvania do a search of their surname and birthplace in that county. Look carefully for patterns in the matches and if they don't go back far enough try to find the path back to the place you are interested in.
If a family starts to emerge in your DNA matches spend some time mapping them. If they are on FamilySearch in the Cumulative Tree you can print pedigrees and groupsheets. You can also create small tree (private or public) where you work with this family unit and if you really don't want anyone to see this research you can also put it in an unindexed tree.