When starting out in your family history research there are lots of mistakes and traps we can fall into. When I first started doing genealogy I KNOW I was guilty of just about all of these. Through practice, listening to advice and more research I found ways to avoid some of these pitfalls.
I have reached out to several people who are accomplished genealogists and historians. Here is some of their advice.
Advice for beginners from an advanced genealogist
Barb Williams is a genealogy researcher who loves the head- bang- against- the- wall challenges that comes with the territory.! She is skilled at research and finding those people that were seemingly impossible to find. In reaching out to Barb, she gave me her top tips to avoid the common rookie mistakes.
#1 biggest mistake is believing other peoples trees without verifying their sources and citations! Worse yet, believing uncited and unsourced information. Ancestry is great, but there are a lot of amateurs who have gone down rabbit holes, posted it, and it has multiplied and morphed into fact! TAKE AWAY: Source and cite your work!! Do not take unsourced and uncited information from others as fact.
#2. Getting so caught up in the chase (filling in the blanks on the chart) that the ancestor moment gets forgotten. Dig into the person- find out their occupation, their faith, their community involvement etc. It paints such a better picture than BCMD info (birth, christening , marriage, death). TAKE AWAY: Learn about the person. Family history is more than just filling in the blanks. Discover the person behind the name
#3. Not knowing the history of the towns your people lived in. Family and friends (remember that friends frequently became future in-laws!) traveled to and settled in towns together. Many times the neighbors shown in censuses have helped me break the brick walls, especially in extreme rural areas. Also, knowing the faith of your people is important because people naturally want to cluster with like minded folk. You needn’t be looking for an Irish Catholic in a German Protestant area! TAKE AWAY: Understand the demographics and history of an area and people. This can steer you in the right direction.
Advice from a Family Search Specialist
Diane is a Family History missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She helps people with the family search website. The biggest mistake she sees is people who don’t clean up the records of the person they are researching. “Make sure you have correct information and that no children have been missed. This results in a lot less duplications and errors.”
Other people find a name and plug it in without checking to make sure it really is their relative. “There are dozens of Mary Margaret’s and Margaret Mary’s with the same last name in the same country. CHECK YOUR SPECS and think before you add or delete anyone.”
Don’t assume someone is a relative unless you have a source to back up an assumption
Traps and Pitfalls
The site familysearch.org is a great resource and genealogy website. In the help section They had an article that listed the most common Rookie Mistakes. Here are a few of them and how to avoid the rookie mistake pitfalls!!
singular focus
1. Dont just research individuals. It is easy to get singularly focused on one person to the exclusion of other family members, family dynamics, locality and cultural influences. SO you may be able to fill in the blanks with a name and dates, you are missing out on so much more. By using all the information available you create a much broader picture and many times will be able to break through a brick wall moment.
poor research notes
2. Poor research notes. Meager source citations, and overabundance of information without really knowing how to organize it. This can create a snowball effect as more information is gathered. Poor notes and organization often leads to frustration , redundant searches, missed documents and overlooked clues. You need to learn to document as you go. Keep up to date, well sourced footnotes and citations. Add records like census, military records, certificates etc in family group logs. You can use these records to also keep track of sources researched so far.
jumping to conclusions
3. Jumping to Conclusions that arent supported by evidence. ” Rookies are often too quick to draw conclusions without enough strong evidence. For example, when rookies find records for individuals with the same name, they may assume the records represent the same person when they do not. For instance, a census record showing William Bescoby born about 1811 in Lincolnshire, England, and a marriage record showing William Bescoby married in 1835 in Lincolnshire, England, can easily appear to be about the same person. Without doing additional research, a rookie may conclude these two records represent the same person. But further research in census and other records would have shown they do not.”
The consequences can be incorrect family tree, incorrect relationships, merging of wrong individuals and time spent researching incorrect lines! Realize that multiple sources are really what is needed to draw valid conclusions .
assuming correct spelling
4. Assuming spellings are correct. Remember people are human and make mistakes. Dont dismiss something because the spelling is wrong. Remember census reporters may have misheard, or misspelled. People indexing the records for digital upload may have made an error. Upon immigration many families changed the spellings of their names to avoid discrimination. If you go in refusing to accept the possibility of another spelling you may miss out on opportunities and clues. This can offer you an opportunity to figure out why the changes took place. Keep an open mind and research variants! I had relatives that came from Germany. One line of that family changed over to the more Americanized version of their name, but the rest didn’t. .
unclear or vague goals
5. Vague research goals: Many mistakes are made because there are no firm research goals. The researcher may be rushed without the proper training tools. Beginners often just want to find as many people as they can and start plugging in the BCMD info. This leads to no real group connections. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t try and do too much all at once, it isn’t just about filling in the blanks. Experienced researchers focus on one event at a time.
quitting
6. quitting their research if no records are found the first time around. Here is the deal, you may not always find a record when you are looking. But more and more records are being made available online every day!
Years ago when trying to research my mothers side of the family we couldn’t find anything! Getting past a great grandparent was almost impossible. You had to find the microfilms and just sit and scroll through hoping to find something. I wanted to give up! It seemed virtually impossible to find information on my great grandmother who lived in an extremely rural area of Tennessee . There was nothing. But now all the info is available at the push of a button. I looked again and found her marriage license. There I found the name of her parents. Through that I found a census that had been indexed and uploaded. I found military records previously unknown, and newspaper articles supporting facts!
It is amazing what has happened in the past 20 years in the world of family history. SO just because you cant find it now doesn’t mean it wont be available in the future. Keep looking!!
I hope this has helped break down some of the biggest family history research traps and rookie mistakes. Let us help you get started with a rewarding research challenge!
Happy Hunting!
