He says, She says
You need to remember that just because the internet and email allows us to communicate and gather information much faster, does not mean the more can be achieved in a shorter period, nor does it mean that the information you find can be considered accurate based on face value. The most frequent mistake made by new researchers is to believe what they find online, whether its in an indexed database or on a family tree website published by another researcher, and to base their own work on these unverified records.
As a general rule of thumb, if you learn anything new online, from another researcher or from any other secondary source, your first task should be to ascertain the original source of the information and decide on how accurate that source is likely to be. Then you need to get access to the same source yourself and check it. In practical terms this means that if you belong to the Bloggs family and find a Bloggs family tree is posted online, by all means use that information as a lead, but do your own work in checking its accuracy. If necessary email the person who created the website and ask them for their sources, most will happily oblige, if they don't you probably have grounds to doubt their accuracy.
In the case of an indexed database, the original source of the information should be available with the database, if it is not then, once again, you will have grounds to doubt the accuracy of the information. A large part of the problem is that much of the information available online is in the form of indexes and almost all of it has been transcribed (copied), in many cases more than once. This means that for every time a record has been transcribed there has been an opportunity for an error to creep in. Worse still, as most indexes have been entered as part of a database with a limited number of fields, additional information that original records might hold could be missed out.
Verifying records is not as onerous as it sounds, aside from the obvious benefit that you might notice something others have missed, you will also be much more certain of the accuracy of your own work, plus you will have documentary evidence to back it up and will have the means to sort out inevitable discrepancies in records, which I guarantee will turn up from time to time. In addition, details which can seem irrelevant at the time, may turn out to be the vital scraps that provide clues to breaking down later brick walls.
Access to original records is not always as difficult, or as costly, as you might think and in each section I will touch upon the various resources available which might help you to verifiy your information.
How sure are you?
Going hand in hand with verifying records is corroboration. Its fine to say that Great Aunt Muriel was born in 1890, but how much proof do you have? To be certain that you have the right information, it is often best to find as many different sources as you can and check that they all agree.
Unfortunately, in most cases different records probably won't exactly agree but they will usually come close, which will at least give you enough of a background picture to be able to judge the truth, based on what you know about the records and where they came from. Ages are often the most flexible and there are thousands of Victorian women who managed amazing feats of time travel, aging only a couple of years every decade, that is if you believe the information on their census returns.
Like verification, corroboration is time consuming and can be difficult sometimes, but again the benefits far outweigh the downside. Each new record will add to the picture you build up of an ancestor's life, even if it disagrees with some of your other records. But the most important benefit will be the eventual solidity of your tree, the more you can back up a fact with different sources of information, the less likely you are to find yourself leaping onto a branch of someone else's family tree by mistake.
So enjoy yourself and take your time, your ancestors are not going anywhere and you might make some wonderful new friends into the bargain. After all, they do say the journey is half the fun and if you are not enjoying it, you're probably doing it wrong!!
Happy Hunting
Back to Previous Page