7 Common Genealogy Mistakes - And How to Avoid Them

we're all human and we all make mistakes particularly when we're just starting out with something so here are seven most common jamia logical mistakes and how to fix them hi i'm caleb lee with tammy history phonetics let's roll right into it with mistake number 1 1 spelling for a name we actually did a video about this about named variations it's a good one you should check it out but basically some people think hey this family spell surname BR o w and e whereas this one spells their name BR o WN without the e so therefore these two families are completely separate well no you see sometimes the person writing down the name misheard the ancestor sometimes the ancestor didn't know how to properly spell their name or they may have misspelled it accidentally mistake number 2 exact dates and this one is kind of similar people say oh this record says the birth date was the 15th of May 1805 or as this one says 15th of May 1803 so therefore this record is not the same person as this record and again this isn't true sometimes again the informant may have misheard it or not known it and they were just trying to take a good guess and sometimes the ancestor didn't quite recall when their birthday was number three jumping to conclusions and this is something that is connected to the first two people will look at a record and say that looks to be about my ancestor sure we'll add it that does not look about to be my ancestor will not add that and it's not like that it's not that easy we have to evaluate the sources properly to do that you have to look for the additional clues that don't exactly pop out with your initial looking at the record sometimes your snap decisions are actually going to be correct and sometimes they're not but the best way to make sure that you don't make mistakes like that is you properly evaluate your sources for relying on other people's trees and this is a big one ancestry.com has a lot of trees made by its members might actually be connected to these trees problem is some of them aren't entirely properly sourced the thing to do here is trust but verify go through and I guess reevaluate the tree make sure that it's properly sourced make sure those sources are good sources because otherwise you might actually come up to a tree that's full of baloney and that's not good number five not citing your sources this is more common in offline genealogy when people just say birth record I'll take the birth date and go away a couple months later where did I get this birth date again and it's easier to not do this in online trees such as ancestry or family search when it's really simple you just attach the source to your ancestor so always attach your sources and if you're doing offline make sure to write down where you got the information number six putting as a married name where the maiden name should be now sometimes the mayor name is all you have of a woman but the you still shouldn't put their married name into the surname field why because then family starts arts start searching for Mary Johnson when in reality her her married maiden name is Sue if he keeps searching for a Mary Johnson you're never gonna find Mary Sue and her family when she was not married this is a problem because it'll confuse genealogists who are searching this Mary Sue person if you put Mary Johnson totally confuse saying wait is this Mary Johnson a Mary Johnson who married him Tom Johnson or Mary something who married Tom Johnson and then took upon the Johnson name this is confusing so if you don't want to confuse people and get angry letters in the mail make sure to get you the married name out of a surname field number seven assuming you're related to a famous person or anyone who shares your last name let's take the example of the surname Lee mine think of famous leaves you might know Harold B Lee robert e lee sara lee bread company I'm not related to any of those people at least through the Lee lying because you see my great-great-grandfather changed his name from Garnett because his dad was a bank robber and also a vampire at one point so I'm not related to any famous Lee's at all but perhaps your surnames stayed the same as for as far back as you can go if you have a common last name like Smith's or Jones you can kind of figure it out there's a lot of Smith's and Jones out there and not all of them are related but even if you have a more unique last name such as Geisler just because you share the same last name doesn't mean that you're actually related to the person you may be but you got to do your research first so there you go that was seven common genealogy mistakes and how to fix them do you know of any other common mistakes that we may have missed well leave them in the comments below so that we might be able to make a common mistakes part two if you like this video press the thumbs up button so reach more viewers check out our website family history fanatics calm to find out more about our upcoming comedy conferences [Music]

Channel: Family History Fanatics

Views: 26,489

Rating: 4.9471073 out of 5

Keywords: genealogy, family history, family tree, ancestry, family search, genealogy research, family history fanatics, family history mistakes, genealogy research tips, genealogy research basics, family history research, common mistakes in genealogy, correcting mistakes in your family tree, genealogy basics, family history research tips

Id: Q-AcmwB9E6c

Length: 5min 36sec (336 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018