Apr 11
2
Misleading Genealogy Advice for Beginners
Confusion. Busywork. Chasing your tail. Scattering your focus. Too many choices. Frustration. Loss of patience. These are things that continually plague new family tree researchers, and it’s not altogether their fault. The blame lies with the do-it-yourself instructions being handed out (or sold) by pseudo-experts, and sometimes by real experts. It’s not so much that it’s untrue as it is that it’s unhelpful. Often, with good intentions.
There’s a difference between knowing something and being able to explain it so someone else can understand it. Plus, an explanation that makes sense to an experienced person may be totally confusing to a novice. This is why so many people give up ancestor hunting before they really get started. So, what’s the answer?
The answer is a different kind of explanation, one that walks a fine line between telling you what to do, and telling you why. It makes sense to explain the steps, but only to someone who understands the basic gist of where they are trying to go with their family tree research.
Here’s an example. People tell you to interview family members, which is good. However, it can lead to your getting confused and overwhelmed. Your fundamental, bare-bones family tree is not about brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. It is about you, your parents, their parents, their parents’ parents, and so on, back as far into the past as you can go. To maintain your focus, you need to concentrate on the “parents of the parents” concept as your road map. The other relatives are not in that direct parental line, so they are of secondary importance to your quest.
Back to the parents of the parents. Once you find them, you need to document that they are your ancestors. What would qualify as documentation of ancestry? Three records:
- Birth Certificates
- Marriage Certificates
- Death Certificates
Are these the only acceptable documents? No. Are they the easiest to find? Sometimes. Then why mention only these three? They are the most obvious official documents that outline a person’s life. Birth, marriage, and death. Any family history researcher who keeps these documents in mind won’t stray far from the trail.
Now here’s how these documents work. A birth certificate will identify the person, and the date and place of birth. However, it will also tell who the parents were. This helps you go back into the past, locating the parents of the parents.
Marriage certificates document a fork in the road. Marriage is the basis for new family lineages being formed. To trace them backwards, we need to know the date and location of the marriage and name of the spouse. Fortunately, the marriage certificate will provide the maiden name of the bride.
Death certificates mark the end of a life. They contain the name of the individual and the time and place of death.
How about other documents, like obituaries? Having the time and place of death is often necessary to be able to find the dates and towns where the obituary was published.
Genealogy isn’t like a blueprint, where everything is mapped out in advance, requiring only that you follow the steps. It’s more like a treasure hunt, where the end isn’t in sight, but where each discovery contains a clue for finding the next. That’s how beginning family history researchers should be taught.
