Group items tagged

 Lessons Learned Secondary sources are, for the most part, only hints.

Nevertheless, a secondary source, even a less than perfect one can be a great help in finding better information.

A secondary source built on secondary sources will accumulate errors.

Prior to the 1930s and 1940s, adoption was a very informal process.

Sometimes, especially in the case of a child whose parent(s) have died, there may be some official paperwork.

Quite often, however, these arrangements were completely unofficial.

The point is paper and pencil genealogy is far from dead. Microfilm is still one of the best sources for finding source documents from all over the world.

There are still a huge number of documents mustily residing in court houses, church record rooms, and storerooms all over the world. Using only the Internet to do genealogy is like trying to build a house with a power saw. Its a great tool, but only if you have a whole tool room full of other tools to help.

Go to the library. Go to all the libraries. Check out the records in the courthouses, Contact local newspapers for old copies. Look in graveyards. Talk to cemetery sextons. Take to morticians. Check out the local genealogical society's records. Go to the nearest Family History Center and look at their books for a change. Go to a genealogical library. Take a trip to the National Archives. Do you get the idea?

in practical terms, it is highly unlikely that anyone has actually achieved a "complete" search

in practical terms, it is highly unlikely that anyone has actually achieved a "complete" search

in practical terms, it is highly unlikely that anyone has actually achieved a "complete" search

My concern is that many researchers (using the term loosely) draw a conclusion from almost no evidence, much less waiting until they have performed an exhaustive search.

now the incorrect research is recorded by many family members and has been perpetuated in files across the Internet.

By its very nature, poor or incomplete research always causes the same type of problem.

Evidence is “conflicting” when two documents provide completely different answers to the research question.

If I write about an event as if that conflicting evidence doesn’t exist, then future researchers will be confused. They will find that evidence just as I did and they will doubt the depth of my research or the credibility of my conclusions as a result. Even worse, I might be wrong in my conclusion about which piece of evidence to keep.

Even if you decide all your ancestors’ stories were hoaxes, you have not proven and learned everything. You still need to find out why the story was created, or how it originated. And the stories just might be true, in some way or another.

Stories do change over time.

A story with no immediately clear supporting evidence is not a platform for building information on an ancestor.

Simply put, credibility can be defined as believability. Credible people are believable people; credible information is believable information. In fact, some languages use the same word for these two English terms

The authors pointed out that credibility is a perception. It can be usefully evaluated as having two qualities, trustworthiness and expertise. Trustworthiness, a key element of the credibility calculus, is defined by the terms well-intentioned, truthful, unbiased, and so on. The trustworthiness dimension of credibility captures the perceived goodness or morality of the source. Expertise, the other dimension of credibility, is defined by terms such as knowledgeable, experienced, competent, and so on. The expertise dimension of credibility captures the perceived knowledge and skill of the source.[2]

Our approaches to dealing with the conflicting evidence will produce greater or lesser credibility in our work product.

seems all of the Irish who came over had the same names. HaHa how do you know which one is right?

Analyze, Analyze, Analyze genealogy documents, data and information!

The true purpose of this "game" is to eliminate the contestants who should not be in your family tree. The goal is to identify who's the last Michael McCabe standing!

It seems like there is a whole generation of would-be genealogists who don't want to look for documents past FamilySearch and Ancestry.com.

To find a person, you have to locate that person in space and time.

Where were you born? If you don't know, then that is the first step in your genealogical digging. I have said this before, but it bears mentioning over and again, your mother was there when you were born. Your grandmother was there when your father was born and so forth and so on.

the same rule does not hold true for your father, he may have been just about anywhere or even deceased when you were born.