The Genealogical Blog of Don Miller

The Genealogical Blog of Don Miller

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Research objectives, the quality of data and what to do with the data you’re collecting

I don’t care if I am related to some famous person and, indeed, over the years I’ve been doing research on my own family, I’ve found the lives of my “common” ancestors to be much more interesting.  I also don’t care about becoming a member of the various societies whose criteria for membership is your ability to prove your descent from a particular group.  I hope and believe that I will always be judged on the things that I do rather than the things my ancestors have done.

I research my family history for several reasons.  First, it is like putting together a non-ending puzzle, and each fact you discover adds a piece to the puzzle and gives you some insight into how you became you.  Second, a successful hunt for information requires a combination of life knowledge, logic and luck.  You develop a hypothesis and then discover facts that either support or refute the theory.  Third, I find it interesting to discover the rare cases where I end up being a distant relative of someone who is now a close friend.  Fourth, as you pursue your research, you become much more familiar with other locales.  You might discover that a particular location has repeatedly changed its identity as national, regional or local boundaries change.  You discover things about the government, religion and practices of these distant locations.  Fifth, when I know what members of my own family were doing at the time of various significant events in history I can relate to those events in a more concrete manner.  When I studied the U.S. Civil War in eighth grade history I didn’t know what impact that war had on my family.  When I am “hot on the trail” of information about an ancestor, I devour everything I can find on that topic, and I end up with a more complete understanding.  Finally, I enjoy sharing the information I discover with other members of my family and with my interested friends.  Be aware that not everyone will think your wonderful genealogical discovery is interesting!  (What do they know? J)

When I was on a debate team in high school, I learned that “evidence” was a combination of facts and logic, and I still apply that standard to most things in my life.  So what exactly is a “fact?”  As you talk with people you discover that things you consider to be facts may not be considered facts by others.  For me the “gold” standard for genealogical research would be to have DNA evidence linking each generation.  I would, for example, absolutely know the identity of my parents if all three of us had submitted DNA and that DNA proved our relationship.  Even if you are lucky enough to have two living parents, you will ultimately reach a point in your family tree where this methodology is not possible because the needed DNA donor is long dead.   So we will inevitably be using some non-scientific sources in our research and it will be up to you and your readers to figure out how valid those sources are.

Moving down the believability spectrum we next encounter governmental documents in which your ancestors are mentioned.  There are many times in a person’s life when their government requires them to submit information about themselves and these documents can be a treasure trove of information for a genealogist.  In today’s world, for example, a birth certificate is filed with the local government almost the instant you make an appearance in the world.  When you go to school, the school keeps records of your attendance and progress.  If you get married, you and your spouse file a marriage certificate with the local government.  If you serve in the military, records are kept of your service and of any benefits like pensions, land, etc. you derive from that service.  If you live in the United States and many other countries, the government performs periodic censuses of the residents and you might be recorded in those records.   If you purchase land the government has a record of the transaction.  If you pay taxes, the government has a record.  And even when you die, the government has a record.  So governmental records are potentially very valuable in your research.   I will talk later about the various types of records that I have personally used, but at this point I’ll point out two things.  First, because of privacy laws, you might not have access to all of the governmental records you might hope for.  And second, because governmental records are based upon information provided by and recorded by humans, these records can and do contain errors.   It is not uncommon to discover an ancestor who, in one census, is listed as having been born in Georgia and in the next census is listed as having been born in Alabama.   There can even be discrepancies in the fundamental things like a person’s age.

In the same vein as governmental records are religious records.  Even if you are not at all religious it is almost certain that at some point in your family tree, you ancestors WERE religious.  One of your jobs will be to figure out what religion your ancestor practiced. Some religions keep better records than others, and the amount of information kept by religious organizations has changed over the years.  Because members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormons) believe that you can baptize dead ancestors even today, the Mormons are the gold standard when it comes to genealogical research.  Their religion encourages them to do genealogical research.  But other religions have also kept good records.  In early New England, many town records were actually church records, and you’ll discover that a baptism date is recorded instead of a birth date.  In Sweden the Lutheran Church recorded not only baptism dates, but also kept up with how well a person could read because of the desirability of reading the Bible.  In Ireland a lot of governmental records were destroyed during the “troubles” in the early 1900s and sometimes the only records that still exist are parish records.  Once again, remember that these records were provided by and recorded by error-prone humans.

You should also collect family anecdotes about your ancestors, but be aware that sometimes these anecdotes have been embellished.  Like the old game of “telephone,” the story of an event that happened two hundred years ago that has been passed down to today by word of mouth may bear little resemblance to what actually happened.  Personally, I am ALWAYS suspicious of grandiose claims like “I am a descendant of Moses” or even “my ancestor single-handedly fought off an attack by Indians and saved the village.”  In spite of these problems, family anecdotes can still be very useful and it can be entertaining to discover how the event was “spun” over the years; you’ll frequently find that there is at least SOME truth in the story.

As you collect information far enough back in your tree, you will probably discover that other people are researching the same family.  At the time I am writing this, I have identified 132 descendants of one of my great-grandfathers, and several of those descendants are interested in and are conducting their own research.  I enjoy sharing information with other researchers and hearing their theories about the family.  But be aware that their standards for acceptability are probably not the same as your standards for acceptability; use their information as a guide but not as absolute proof.

So in the absence of “absolute” proof like DNA, how do you make sense of data from these other sources?  Basically, you put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and keeping the quality of the data in mind, you look for consistency between the sources.  If four sources of information show your ancestor as having been born in Georgia and only one shows the ancestor as having been born in Alabama, you lean toward Georgia as being the birthplace.  Develop theories based upon your data but don’t be afraid to abandon the theory if compelling evidence to the contrary confronts you.

Finally, I want to talk about organizing your data.  When you are pursuing a single branch of your family tree, it is fairly easy to keep things straight in your head.  But sooner or later you will read a dead end on that branch and you’ll start on another branch.  Inevitably you will stumble on something that might be relevant for the first branch, and your ability to “switch gears” back to the first branch is critical to your success.  As a software engineer, I wrote my own program to organize the data I collected.  But in today’s world there are many good genealogical software programs available.  Some of these programs are free and others are for sale.  I have NOT surveyed all of the possible programs out there and I continue to use my own programs as my primary tool.  As we move further along in future blog entries, I’ll talk about actual data sources I have used in my own research, but for now I’ll just mention that no matter what you think about Ancestry.com, they put a lot of work into collecting a vast array of data from all over the world – but you must subscribe to their web site (for a fee) to access the information.  Ancestry.com has a desktop program called Family Tree Maker that interacts well with their web site.  I own a copy of Family Tree Maker but still use my own program.  Family Tree Maker currently costs $40.00 and it will definitely help you organize your data.  But again, there are other choices out there and some of those choices are free.