#52Ancestors - Week 14 - Check It Out

It is something experienced researchers say over and over - when you see new information on someone's online family tree you need to check it out - thoroughly.  One of the biggest mistakes we can make as researchers is to blindly accept as fact anything we see in someone else's online family tree.  Any new piece of information needs to be checked and should be taken as a hint at best.  Not everyone out there is a meticulous researcher and some simply see a record that kind of fits and add it to their trees.  Typing errors when adding dates can also create misleading 'facts', and many tree builders out there don't even check their trees enough to spot glaring errors and absolute impossibilities.

Check all your facts, don’t assume that any document is right or wrong, and always try to find other independent sources to verify your facts.

Don’t assume that :   

• Your ancestors were married 
• Your ancestors used their dominant local church  
• Census information is accurate  
• Any records are 100% correct  
• Your ancestor’s life events (births, marriages, deaths) were recorded  
• All relevant records have survived the passage of time

I am constantly amazed by some of the errors and misinformation I find online, especially in online trees.

So many people make assumptions, ignore the basics of biology and chronology, and put their (clearly incorrect) data online for others to copy - and the copiers accept their incorrect data without questioning errors which should be clear.  Always 'check it out'.

Here are some of the things to keep in mind to help spot obvious errors - and I have seen all of these in online trees : 

• Children cannot be born before their parents. 
• Children cannot be born to a mother who is 6 years old.  Or 94 years old.  
• Children are highly unlikely to be born to a father who is 89 years old.  While this MAY be biologically possible, it is unlikely and deserves a bit of fact checking. 
• A child cannot be christened 4 months before they are born. 
• A woman cannot marry 3 years after she has died. 
• A man cannot enlist in the army 5 years after he has died. 
• Full siblings cannot be born 4 months apart.  While medical technology may be making this possible today, it really wasn't possible in the 1840s.  Baptisms, however, are another matter. 
• Travel takes time, especially before the age of the airplane.  In 1883 a child could not be born in England and christened in Australia 5 days later.  Something in this timeline is wrong.

So remember to Check It Out.