Genealogy or Family Tree studies.

When trying to trace our ancestors there are several things to consider -

But just how accurate is the information?

Well there are lots of things that could go wrong! Let us consider some of them.

Family anecdotes and archives - Is the anecdotal information accurate or muddled? Do family photographs have the names and other details of the people written on the back? How much has been lost and forgotten? We are likely to dispose of archives and memorabilia during house clearances which would be treasured by future generations. How many family stories have deliberately been suppressed because they were thought to be embarrassing - illegitimacy, suicide, bankruptcy, poverty, prison ... ?

Example - One aunt remembered ancestors coming from Skelmersdale - yet it only relatively recently became a town.

Example - I have heard numerous anecdotes about Thomas Sheppard, the first Curator of Hull Museums, about his unorthodox practices that still arouse strong emotions amongst his profession over sixty years after he died, but these have never been published.

Mobility - Did our ancestors move around physically or socially? We tend to think of families remaining in the same place for centuries, but actually that rarely happened. Working people moved to find employment. What we now think of as being terrible conditions in mines and factories during the industrial revolution paid better than agricultural work in our idyllic countryside! Did they join the armed forces? Were they removed from the land by landowners (for example in the Scottish 'clearances')?

Example - My great grandfather was in the army so his children were born in different towns and some were brought up by relatives.

Civil records - Do we have enough detail to know what we are asking for? Has the record survived (a lot of Irish civil records were lost in a fire)? Has it been indexed so we can find it? Has it been indexed correctly? Has the indexer changed the spelling? Did the registrar spell the name correctly? Did the registrar hear the name correctly? Was our ancestor literate - would they have realised that their details were incorrect when they signed he document? Had our ancestor deliberately given the wrong information? Has our ancestor given the wrong information because they were ignorant of the truth? Has the name of the place changed (e.g. a village has become part of a town) or has it been moved into a different county?

Example - on the birth records of her three children a relative lists three different maiden family names McConnor, Connerly and McConnel. She made her mark on one the documents because she could not read or write, the other records had been reported to the registrar by a neighbour. Which name is right? Or are they all wrong? Did she really come from Dublin or is that just what her parents told her.

Census records - these are records of everyone living at a particular property on census day provided by the head of the household to a recorder who visited. Was our ancestor at home on the census day? Do we have enough detail to know what we are asking for? Has the record survived? Is it illegible? Has it been indexed so we can find it? Has it been indexed correctly? Has the indexer changed the spelling? Did the recorder spell the name correctly? Did the recorder hear the name correctly? Was the record given by the head of the household? Did the recorder actually visit the premises (they might have used their local knowledge; they might have failed to contact the occupiers and not returned)? Did our ancestor not wish to be on the census (they might have been avoiding a poll tax)? Was our ancestor literate - would they have realised that their details were incorrect when they signed he document? Had our ancestor deliberately given the wrong information? Has our head of the household given the wrong information because they were ignorant of the truth? Has the name of the place changed (e.g. a village has become part of a town) or has it been moved into a different county?

Parish records - these are records kept by churches of christenings, reading of bans and marriages. What if our ancestors did not attend the church? What if the Parish records have been lost or damaged? Is the priest's writing legible? Does the priest records all the details (some are better than others)? Did the priest spell the name correctly? Did the priest hear the name correctly? Was our ancestor literate - would they have realised that their details were incorrect when they signed he document? Had our ancestor deliberately given the wrong information? Has our ancestor given the wrong information because they were ignorant of the truth? Has it been indexed so we can find it? has it been recorded on IGI? Has it been indexed correctly? Has the indexer changed the spelling? Can we visit the church to check the original records? Have the records been moved to a county archive?

Example - in the parish records of his children the first name of my great great great great grandfather is listed as Henry, Harry, Hary, Hairy and Herry - I presume that his formal name was Henry but that he was know as Harry, which in a Scottish dialect could sound like Hary, Hairy or Herry to the priest recording the christenings!

Electoral rolls - returned annually by the head of the household of everyone living at an address eligible to vote. Were people deliberately refusing to register to avoid taxation? Can the electoral officer read the head of household's handwriting? Are there transcription errors? We normally have to search by address. There is no record of young people at that address. There is no record of the relationships. Have the records been moved to a city or county archive?

Cemeteries and burial records - Burial records may not exist or have been lost. They are often difficult to access. Our ancestor's may not have been rich enough to have been buried. Our ancestor's may not have been rich enough to have a grave stone. The grave stone may have been destroyed. In the pasts graves were often later reused and the bones put into an ossuary. The grave stone may have been moved. The inscription may be badly weathered and now partly or whole illegible. The details may have been sparse anyway.

Example - This Sandstone gravestone is so badly weathered that you cannot read the inscription after 100 years.

Obituaries - published in newspapers and periodicals, written by a reporter who interviews relatives or by close friends of the deceased. These tend to concentrate on their later years and achievements because perhaps their peers have also died. They may be prepared hurriedly using previous published material as the source. They tend to be of people of status - professionals, famous people, rich people, business owners or keen volunteers. Corrections of mistakes are rarely published. People only tend to speak (or write) good of the dead, so some interesting information and anecdotes may be lost.

Example - When researching about Thomas Sheppard, the first Curator of Hull Museums, I found that the obituary in the local paper was largely a repeat of the article about his retirement with some added details of the people attending his funeral.

Other people's family research - We may find links to distant relatives by searching their published genealogy, either in books or on those very popular genealogy websites. But can we trust their research? Have they seen the original documents? Have they introduced new transcription errors? Could we mistakenly turn their uncertainties into certainties? Have they entered pure guesses into a genealogy website simply because the computer program demands that a field cannot be left empty? If we employ a professional researcher can we trust their results.

Example - My aunt asked a friend of a friend to research our ancestors using III and he produced a family tree which showed fathers going back to 1599, but with uneven gaps in the dates between generations and no wives or siblings. The records of these people all exist on IGI, but when we examined the original civil records we discovered that a mistake had been made.

Wills and estates - our ancestors have to have owned property and been rich to pass anything on to their children!

So in short - the problems can be classified as :-

• not originally recorded
• record lost or partly lost
• insufficiently recorded
• incorrectly recorded
• incorrectly transcribed
• incorrectly indexed
• searcher does not have enough information to search successfully
• the more times the data has been copied the greater the chance of errors being introduced (the 'Chinese Whisper' effect)
• other genealogists' guesses being assumed to be correct - levels of certainty are not defined and there may be different standards being used

And generally it is hard to trace your ancestors back much further than the 1750s unless they owned property.

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Mike Horne, 2008.