How to Avoid Common Genealogy Mistakes

Being a Genealogist means you have to keep a level head. You have to keep your excitement over finding new evidence in check because every time this happens there is the possibility of a let down. And the let downs do happen probably more times than you would like. The excitement of find new evidence could and probably has taken you down the wrong road many times, your emotions just can't handle this! So the best way is to stay calm and follow up your new evidence with further research.

Listed here are the assumptions that people commonly use while research their family tree. If you go down one of these roads way to often, you will be one of the millions that throws there hands up and quits.

1. Never assume the children come from the only wife you have found so far.
The man's children could of come from another women, not his present wife, or his wife previously or even a wife after the one you have found. Remember that parentage is one of the hardest things to document, unless you know for sure. Women died in childbirth all the time. It was not uncommon for a man to have 2 or more wives.

2. Don't worry if you haven't found a marriage record. There are several reasons for this. A lot of early marriages were not documented at the time of the marriage. It could of taken 5 years or so before the marriage could be written down in a courthouse. There might have not been a courthouse around or even a church; lots of early marriages took place in homes. Hundreds of records were burned during the Civil War.

You have to be creative and look for alternative forms of proof.

3. Don't always assume that your ancestor's came from the same state that their neighbors came from. Migration routes were basically the same but not every person follow the same route. You have to research further.

4. If you don't find your ancestor in the next census record and you assume it's because they were old and died, don't just assume. Yes, most people did live the normal life span but people did live to a much older age also.

5. If you find several men that live close to each other and have the same last name, don't assume they are brothers. Yes, there is a chance that they could be brothers but they can also be cousins, uncles or might not be any relation at all. Not every surname that's the same is related.

You have to research further, look at the closeness of their homes, how each of them named their children, and court records to see if they witnessed each other's documents.

6. Don't assume that your Jr. you found has the exact same name as Sr. Years ago the words aunt, uncle, Jr., Sr., and cousin was also used when the individual was no relation; in other words it was used very loosely. For example, you may have found land records that have Jr. and Sr. listed but these 2 men just happen to have the same name so to distinguish between the to, Jr. and Sr. was used.

7. Don't always assume that the name of an individual is a boy or girl's name. Parents sometimes just liked a name and to us it sounds like a girl but back then it was a boy. Some names years ago were originally boys name but now they are girls. Parents also named their children after a famous person or a long ago relative.

8. Don't always assume that a female that has the same last name as her father isn't married. Women did marry men that had the same last name as they did. This happened a lot back when household were scattered far apart and relation lived fairly close to one another; cousins married distant cousins and cousin's married distant uncles or aunts.

Keep in mind that divorced women did sometimes take back their original name and widows sometimes did the same.

9.Don't assume that your ancestor died in the same place he or she was born and never moved around. It wasn't uncommon for individuals to move their families many time but as they did get older, most moved back to live closer to their family. The best way of working on this is to create a timeline and research many of the areas that they lived.

10. If your ancestor lived in one town or county and then you loose them, don't just assume that they picked up and moved. There are other reasons you may have lost them. The county that your ancestor lived could have been broken up into several counties or they could of lived on the line dividing 2 counties. You have to research the surrounding counties.

Being a genealogist or family historian, assumptions is what keeps the research going but you have to recognize the trick as an assumption and prove or disprove them with further evidence.