Most beginning genealogists concentrate on “accumulating” ancestors—adding names to a family tree, finding about as many earlier generations as they can, adding a maternal line. In so doing, they can easily make mistakes that can lead to either a brick wall or wrong information. The following are five common mistakes of the beginner genealogist.
- Failure to research siblings of ancestors
- Failure to find multiple sources
- Trusting secondary sources
- Trusting published genealogies (both print and on-line)
- Being unready to share results due to poor organization
Broaden the Search to Include Siblings and Multiple Sources
A common error is concentrating on the direct line and failing to research the brothers and sisters of ancestors. The thought typically is: Why trace lines you don’t have to, that aren't direct ancestors but only related, with the extra time, expense, and paperwork? But the beginning genealogist fails to realize that in the siblings’ lines might be information on earlier ancestors. Figure 1 shows how a descendant of Nehemiah Cheney might be frustrated at lack of data and possibly be at a dead end. However, a search for Nehemiah’s siblings results in finding three published articles for his siblings, with information on their parents, locations, and family movements.
Related to this is the failure to seek multiple sources for data. A researcher finding a death certificate, which gives date of birth and parents names, gladly accepts this. But a death certificate, completed years after the birth by someone who may not know the correct information, can contain errors. Surnames can change. Adoptions take place. A missing middle initial may cause the researcher to miss the true line when common names are involved.
Never Trust Secondary Sources or Compiled Genealogies
“If it’s published in a book, it must be true.” Thus armed with a family history published in 1897, and with a list of gravestone transcriptions found on the Internet, the beginner ploughs ahead, extends inaccurate information to erroneous conclusions, and shares this with other inexperienced genealogists.
Be careful with all published information, both new and old. Use published genealogies and data compilations as clues of what might be, not definitive statements of “this is how it is!” Researchers in the Nineteenth Century operated under greater difficulty for gathering data and at times jumped to their own conclusions that could have been prevented with a little more follow-up. And occasionally a published genealogy is an out and out fraud.
Such venerable sources as Savage (for New England families) have been trusted by genealogists for centuries. The respect is well deserved, but Savage is not error-proof. Figure 2 shows a case where Savage mistook two men with the same name, one from Newbury MA and one from Boston MA, and actually had the Newbury man drowning five years after his will was proved!
Savage, Virkus, Cavaliers and Pioneers, even the recent and more accurate Great Migration series, are all secondary sources. Published genealogies, both in print and on the Internet, are at best secondary sources and often tertiary (or worse). They should not be trusted without corroborating research.
Always Complete Work as That it’s Ready to Share
The genealogists generates lots of paper: draft pedigree charts, copies of vital records, printouts of computer data, revised pedigree charts, copies of probate records, copies of census returns, “complete” pedigree charts, etc. In the first flush of success at documenting people long dead, these papers can pile up at a rate that confuses even the researcher.
A filing system is essential, both to share with other researchers and to allow those who come after and pick up another’s research to be able to make sense of it. A good rule for filing is: Organize accumulated research papers in such a way that another person could write a family history from the papers as filed.
Because, as a researcher moves from beginner hobbyist, to dedicated hobbyist, to serious genealogist, the likelihood is ever greater that the original researcher will want to document everything in a written family history. If this is done in a way that it is publishable, with impeccable citation of sources, with excellent organization, and with new information added to older published works, the family history will indeed be a thing of value.
These rules help the beginner genealogist to passage quickly to the category of serious genealogist. The family and its preserved history will benefit from this.
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