The excitement of discovering new members of our family tree is a highlight of most people's searches. New discoveries usually bring more areas of the family to explore and more questions too! It's important that before you embark on these new avenues, you check that your research can be corroborated or if you have not done this, how you can check that it is accurate.
Two stories come to mind with information that we have been asked to investigate which illustrate in different ways, why it is important to check information is accurate.
The first involves someone who was working back through the generations when they hit a brick wall. They had little knowledge of one branch of the family but with an usual surname and a known location for where the family had lived at one time, they had decided to check birth records for their great grandfather who they thought was born towards the end of the 19th century.
Sure enough, they found a record for the correct name and father's name (they had not known the mother's name) and in the year that they were expecting to find the birth. It had taken place in the neighbouring town to which they had known the family had lived at a later date. Sensibly, they checked this unusual surname for anyone else living in the area but the only details that came up in that area was for the birth certificate of a sibling so all seemed well.
They asked Kin Tree to look further into this as their great, great grandparents had come from Ireland and after hitting a brick wall, they wanted our expertise in Irish research to help reveal the next chapter of their family's story.
Our first job is always to review the information that we have been given. We had asked why they were sure this was the birth of their great grandfather and they of course explained about the location. Without that definite link, we decided to look further into their great grandfather's life and given his date of birth, we looked for a World War 1 record for him and discovered that he had died in 1917. This was a key fact as the family's actual great grandfather had died in the late 1950s!
We did track down the right family for them however and indeed their Irish family too. This shows why it is important to not make assumptions!
The second example was based on a genuine mistake by a family rather than an assumption however it was compounded by accepting that someone else's family tree was accurate when it was not.
This time, there had been lots of work done on the tree in question including documents to corroborate the information. Kin Tree had been contacted to see if we could take the tree further back or make suggestions for further investigation. We were reviewing the information and checking it for accuracy and overall it was fine until we got to the early 1860s. A mother had died in the same year that her baby was born, let's call the baby Mary Smith. The family had noticed that the mother had not appeared in the 1871 census and checked for a death and found that the mother had indeed died the year that Mary was born.
Next, the family turned to the family tree hints and suggestions that appear on some of the more popular family tree sites. These can be great for swapping information and finding new branches of your family tree. There, they found someone else who had Mary's details and the details of Mary's descendants on their own tree. A distant relative it seemed! These matched the family's own research into Mary's descendants.
As luck would have it, there were also details of Mary's mother and her ancestors. Our family even went to the bother of contacting the other tree owner to find out how they had tracked down Mary's mother's birth,. This led to them realising that they had missed a vital record that had been there all the time. The other tree holder was happy to swap information too.
What we discovered though when cross referencing the information was that the birth certificate that had been found for Mary belonged to a different Mary Smith! Coincidence meant that they had the same name and their parents had the same names too. (Mary's parents' names had come from Mary's marriage certificate). Also, both babies' mothers died when they were infants.
The problem was that our family had only checked if there was a death for Mary's mother but had not taken a note of the specific details of the death. When we checked it properly, we found that the lady in question had died the year that our Mary was born but some months before Mary's birth! The other family tree listing Mary's family incorrectly had made the same mistake it seemed - although they later said that they had copied the details from another tree and had not checked themselves!
Both these cases show us the need to check information carefully and to not make assumptions.
So this reminds us to
- Check all records and take copies or notes of the details.
- Don't assume that the first record you come to that seems to fit is the correct one unless you have overwhelming supporting evidence.
- Fill in all details of these records into your family tree.
- Cross reference to highlight any anomalies. A family tree programme can help to flag these up.
- Always review your information before moving on to the next task.
- Be honest with yourself about your information as otherwise you could be wasting time and money barking up the wrong family tree!
- If you are looking online at other people's family tree information remember that it may be inaccurate so check the details yourself.
- Contact Kin Tree for a review of your information or for further help on where to go next with your family tree.
