The Sins of a Genealogist

We are all guilty of the occasional genealogical sin (after all, we are none of us perfect).  Below are a few of the more common and damaging genealogical sins - how many have you been guilty of?

Sin 1: Assuming everything online is correct
The most common mistake around it to take everything published online as being true and correct.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  From transcription errors to uncorroborated trees to typos, there are mistakes aplenty online.
So never just “cut and paste” information into your tree. You need to confirm the information yourself, via various sources, before you include it in your research.  Never assume that everyone else out there has proper research skills and has made the effort to verify their data.  For many, near enough is good enough and if most of the names and dates match they will take the information as correct.  And pass it on to others.

Sin 2: Not noting every search
Keeping some kind of research log is essential.  Know where you have been, where you found each piece of information, and just as importantly, know where you failed to find anything.  Knowing where you searched and what search terms you used can help you avoid reworking your research and help develop your methodology.
If you have good research logs it is much easier when you return to a search several months or even years later as you have a clear understanding of what you have searched for, where you have looked and whether you have any uncorroborated leads to follow up. Without this, you can waste so much valuable time duplicating failed searches.

Sin 3: Not going beyond birth, marriage and death records
Family history isn't restricted only to lists of births, marriages and deaths – it is so much more. Enrich your tree by looking at the various ways in which you can go beyond the bare facts, using information such as newspaper archives, your ancestor’s career, where they lived, local maps etc. Look for the stories, the details, the minutae of the daily lives of ancestors.  Then look wider as well.  What local events in their suburb, town or village might they have attended?  What historical events did they live through?  It all helps built the greater picture of their lives.

Sin 4: Trying to do everything yourself
Don’t try to fly solo – you don’t have to do it all on your own. Do you have relatives out there who are also doing research?  Make contact and share – you may each have parts of the overall puzzle that the other lacks, and pooling your resources makes sense (just remember Sin 1 – trust but verify).  Consider joining a local family history society in the area that your ancestors lived – especially if it is somewhere distant you would have trouble visiting yourself.  Researching an area on the other side of the world can be especially difficult if you cannot travel there – local family history societies can allow you to tap into the local expertise of society members. Most family historians are extremely helpful, especially to a newcomer, and are only too pleased to help. So don’t be shy. If you need some help, ask for it!

Sin 5: Adopting the scattergun approach
Having a goal and sticking to a plan is the key to maintaining focus. Many people, when they first start to trace their family tree, dive in and cast their net far and wide, in the hope of catching as much information and finding as many ancestors as they can as quickly as possible. This might be tempting, but it can lead to you being swamped and overloaded with information, looking at a disorganised pile of papers and notes and wondering how it all fits together.  Being organised right from the start is so much easier and helps you keep order to your research.  The scattergun approach also leads to the cardinal sin number 1, taking things at face value.  Before you know it, you are several generations back on completely the wrong tree and have wasted hours of valuable research time. So have a key set of goals before you fire up the laptop and make sure you make notes on where you searched, what you found – and what you couldn’t find.

Sin 6: Not checking your previous work
As you become a more accomplished genealogist and your family history grows, make sure you go back over your previous work to check for errors and more importantly, to find out whether new information has become available since your original search. More and more documents are becoming available online, so keep going back and reusing those searches, to see if anything new has materialised. We often get caught in the trap of thinking that once we have searched somewhere it is a waste of time to go back – but this can lead to us missing important new information that has just been uncovered, digitised, or in some way made available to researchers.

Sin 7: Thinking you can find everything online
You can’t “do” your family tree solely from the comfort of your home. As wonderful as the internet has become for family historians, we can make the mistake of thinking that everything we need can be accessed from our living room via our laptop. What is available online is still only a drop in the ocean of records and information out there in repositories, archives, libraries and other places.  So get out there and explore!
Plan and organise trip to a local archive office or library. Remember to do your homework before you go, there are lots of great guides available online to help you plan a visit and maximise your research time. 

Sin 8: Inflexibility on names
What’s in a name? I have at least a couple of variations of every surname in my tree (who knew you could spell ‘Clark’ so many ways?) so think outside the box with names and spellings. Make use of the wildcard searches on the various websites and again look for alternatives ways in which you can corroborate what you find. Remember that often it was not our actual ancestors that recorded their name – it was the clerk, secretary, census taker, registrar, etc. and often they simply wrote the name how they heard it.