You've Finally Found that Elusive Relative, but.....

 

Ancestry.com (Photo credit: LollyKnit)

If there's anyone on the planet who is more enthusiastic than me regarding family research, I haven't met them.  I'm especially focused after preparing for and delivering an instructional lecture on just that very subject.  I've been lucky enough to have been able to book 6 different venues for a variety of programs.  Some are "one-night-stands" and others are 3, 4, 5 even 6 individual sessions long.

 So I'd like to start with last night.  The weather was threatening and, frankly, we didn't get all the people who signed up to show up.  So there was a smaller, cozier group.  One attendee is the head archivists at a local repository.  Imagine how I felt trying to teach someone who probably has forgotten more than I know! Another person was a middle aged man who has been researching for many years. We also had a newby, a tyro who was uncommonly enthusiastic....but not more enthusiastic than me!!

This 2-session program is a somewhat condensed version of my usual 4 or 5 session programs.  So we all had a lot of

 

English: Google Logo officially released on May 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ground to cover.  I decided that since there were more people there who were relatively experienced, I'd dive into tips and strategies to use on Ancestry, FamilySearch, Google and others.



Which (finally) brings me to the subject of tonight's blog.  And it's this:  There are 2 categories of information that can be found at any genealogy research website.  One of the more reliable sets of records are the public records such as census, probate, military, christening, birth, marriage, death and so on.  Whenever I find a "hint", if it includes public records, I'll take the time to check out those records and make a judgement as to the accuracy of the data and its relevance to the subject person.  That's the easy part!  

What's more challenging is to help "students" understand the pitfalls of privately uploaded Public Member Trees with little or

 

Maria Hernandez baptized 1920 (Photo credit: GoCal83)

no supporting documentation.  Ancestry calls these trees "Unsourced".  So many "enthusiastic" researchers are too fast to grab data and put it up on the internet to help build their trees, not realizing the danger.  If its out there, someone will download it and take it for gospel simply because it was on the internet. After all, if it's on the internet, it must be ironclad fact.  Not so fast!



Now in the interest of disclaimers, I've used the data from many of those Public Member Trees without too much worry, but only those trees that have sources already attached.  That doesn't mean that I grab it and run.  I will do the same thing as I do with the public records.  I open that member's tree and take a look at what has been attached to it for sources and go through the same process of judging the accuracy and relevance.  If a Public Member Tree has information on individuals that may have a fit in my family, it's worth the effort to move slowly on trusting someone else's work.

English: Screen capture of FamilySearch.org web site (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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