Start Your Genealogy Research Right - Avoid These Common Mistakes!

There are some common mistakes in genealogy research -- and these mistakes affect beginners and experienced genealogists alike. Here's what the mistakes are and, more importantly, how you can avoid them!

In this video, Amy Johnson Crow shares the most common genealogy mistakes and how they can hold you back from making more discoveries in your family history. She also shares a BIG tip on how to not make a complete mess of your online family tree!

#genealogy #familyhistory #ancestry
Chapters:
0:00 Taking everything at face value
1:59 Online family trees
3:12 Going too fast
4:32 Not exploring what we already have
5:47 Skipping steps and family legends
7:49 Falling into ruts in your research
8:41 The key to genealogy research success

Amy's book "31 Days to Better Genealogy" is available on Amazon:
(Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

[peglegpete]

I am 82 years old and my memory has gotten so good I remember things that never happened.

[gutsbiker]

I've been working on my family genealogy for 2 years, the big mistake I made in the beginning was that I didn't save records that I found that proved relationships. I was in too big of a hurry to build my tree, and now some records that I know exist, I can't find again. So now I save everything I think may be of value to my research.

[nunyabiznez]

My Mom was Irish Catholic. Her grandparents came to New England from Ireland ca 1900-1905. One set of clues that she left behind that I didn't know existed until she died were a shoebox filled with old mass cards. Every relative that ever died on her side of the family had a mass card and there were around 60 of them. I used information from those that often included obituaries to piece together two additional generations of Irish Ancestors. It turned out that one line consisted of successive generations of immigrants who came to New England to live with a married blood related aunt. That's four generations of aunts who helped the next generation immigrate here documenting our families slow migration throughout the potato famine and up to the early 20th century ending with my great grandfather arriving on the maiden voyage of the Carpathia. So that turned out to be four generations where my ancestors back in Ireland were mentioned in aunt's marriage and death records here in the U.S. Mind you I'm not actually descended from any of these aunts directly. Each one was a sister of someone who stayed behind in Ireland and raised a family there that produced a child who would immigrate here. It still goes on today. My second cousin just sponsored her niece who just immigrated here from Galway a couple of years ago and I am in contact with her Mom now who as it turns out lives in the family home that our Irish ancestors lived in during the pre potato famine period and she helped put me in touch with a relative who helped me trace that Irish line back to about 1730. All because Mom kept a shoebox filled with mass cards that she didn't think had any genealogical value and thus never bothered to tell me about. She whose profession was writing obituaries for a newspaper didn't think obituaries would help me with my search.

So one never knows what kinds of records can help in a search. I certainly had no idea mass cards could be so useful

[nunyabiznez]

My Dad had told us when my siblings and I were kids that we had a Spanish ancestor who owned all of Florida at one time. After he died I found a family tree that our late grandmother had put together showing three generations of Spanish ancestors from Florida. I was excited to discover it so I could document the ancestor who once owned Florida. He died when I was 16 and it would be a few more years before I would have a chance to go to Florida and find out more. Meanwhile I searched in New England and from what I read about Florida history, no one person, save the king of Spain, could be said to own all of Florida at any time. So the "family history" that I was told, in the form of oral history proved to be false. But... About 20 years ago I found out that one of those Spaniards in my grandmother's family tree actually did own and control a substantial portion of what was then the colony of La Florida. As it turns out, in 1763, Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain. The British controlled Florida for about 20 years ending in 1783 which included the entire period of the American Revolution. When Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain almost all the Spaniards fled, some to Spain, many to Cuba and others to other parts of New Spain. They left their homes, plantations and businesses behind. That's a few thousand people. But two or three Spanish families stayed behind and promised to be loyal to the British. One of them were my Spanish ancestors and that one in particular was a very successful businessman who owned several plantations and businesses in and around St. Augustine. He ended up supplying food to the British and Americans each without the other's knowledge. He continued to run his plantations and businesses without interruption just had a new set of customers. He also had two wives, simultaneously, along with two sets of children in two separate homes, one on a plantation and the other in the city limits. And once upon a time he dressed up as a French prostitute and smuggled in women's clothing to two signers of the Declaration of Independence who were being held prisoner and got them dressed up also as French prostitutes and the three simply strolled out of Fort St. Marks (as the British called it) and out to a waiting ship my ancestor owned and he sailed them right back to the Carolinas where they were from. So this particular ancestor ended up buying up large tracts of land and many homes and businesses owned by his former neighbors and most of the ones he and the other two remaining families didn't end up buying or already owning he controlled acting as an agent on behalf of the fleeing former residents of La Florida. So that ended up being that long ago grain of truth that was turned into a family myth. It turns out that for roughly 20 years one of my ancestors owned or managed more land and properties and businesses and homes than any other individual and that constituted roughly 20% of what the British called East Florida, the most populated (with Europeans) part of Florida. So my ancestor turned out to be a far more interesting character than my Dad would have ever imagined. Not ever actually owning all of Florida but to one of my ancestors in his youth it might have seemed that way so that is the way it was passed down to us. I have learned that not only should one take oral history with a grain of salt, one should also take it with an open mind and a willingness to track down the origins of that oral history.

Another story passed down was about how an ancestor was slaughtered by Native Americans and blood was spilled on a boulder and stained that boulder red which no one has ever been able to clean off said rock. I had thought for many years it was just a completely made up myth until I found out that sometime in the 1690's and in connection with widespread unrest among a couple of New England tribes there was an ancestor killed by a Native American and whose body was left on a large boulder and that that the boulder was red in spots and the colonists thought it was blood stains on the rock and locally was known as "Massacre Rock." At some point in the 20th century the rock was investigated since there were a number of supernatural claims about the rock and it turned out that it simply contained natural mineral deposits that made the rock appear red when dry but black when wet so when the colonists tried to clean the "blood" off it it would seem clean when wet but when it dried the "blood" came back. Our line hasn't lived in that town since 1750. so that's over 200 years the story was passed down orally and fairly intact.

Another more recent oral history told of an ancestor who was like Edison and had hundreds of patents and an extensive laboratory where he invented things. I found out, long after Dad died, that we did indeed have an ancestor who had patents. But not hundreds. He owned a saw mill in New Hampshire and was innovative in the machinery that he used to turn raw longs into usable building materials. He was active circa 1840-1880. He had five patents to his name and did indeed have a workshop and I found advertisements for his saw mill that both cut lumber for a fee and sold lumber. Not like Edison by any stretch as it seems he really didn't make much money from the patents in terms of selling inventions but I guess it prevented others from using the same process to efficiently produce building materials. In any case a good example of oral history originating from something truthful yet somehow getting altered along the way.

More recently I helped a friend find his ancestry. He was born in Jamaica and the claim was that his grandfather was a pirate, an actual pirate of the Caribbean. The truth is that is great, great grandfather, roughly 140 years ago was in fact an actual pirate. Not the swashbuckling kind mind you. He was convicted of stealing a small boat and using it to go from dock to dock stealing fishing equipment and using it to catch fish for himself. The charge was piracy though the facts kind of sucked the romance out of the whole matter. But later in life he ended up as a preacher and married a woman from Portugal who it turns out has real connections to Portuguese nobility roughly 200 years ago.

[dm]

Couldn't have explained it better Amy. Genealogy for me is researching, verifying, playing detective, getting my hands on copies of original documents and ignoring 90% of online trees. At any given time I could have 9 websites open. My mum always said we had French ancestors, but research and DNA says otherwise!

[annew]

Excellent tips. Thanks Amy. I’m currently going back to double check my evidence for the people I put on my tree (siblings of 1x and 2x great-grandparents). My favourite way to research is to search the internet on my iPad and take screen shots of what I find. Then I download them to my laptop and sort them in folders. I can print the images off if I want. I’m still an old fashioned paper girl with binders full of family letters, cards, obituaries, wedding invitations, birth announcements, newspaper clippings, etc.

[stuartm]

I found this extremely helpful and should be required viewing for anyone using a genealogy site. I very fortunately had very good family records going back 5 generations on both my mother's and father's side of the family. A few years ago, I decide to go on one of the sites to see how much further I could go back. I was researching a John Howard that was born in Massachusetts in 1780. I found another person's tree that matched very closely with mine with all the same names. I was about to connect the tree to mine when I looked at John's father who was also named John. The person's whose tree it was had the father John dying in the same town, but 110 years before the son John was born. So, I didn't attach the tree. It took a lot of digging, but it ended up that the person was right, but they had skipped over 2 generations. There were actually 4 generations and all the first sons were named John Howard. Lesson : Watch the birth and death dates and don't take them a face value.

[eleriloki]

When I research my family tree I always have my calculator up. That way I can check to be sure the ages of the person I'm researching are correct. For example, I found a marriage record with one of my great + ancestors name but the date would have him married at age 8 if the record pertained to him. An obvious ignore. Also in Ancestry if I look at other trees I check the records they have first to see if they coincide with my records or if they are relevant to the ancestor I am wanting to attach it to.

[Irresistible_Light]

I absolutely love this video! You said everything that I am always preaching about to other family members that want to research but they are not really researching. I am so glad that you made this video!!!

[JT]

My partner's grandmother was Hannah, but always called Nance by her brothers. We have documentary evidence of this, but another family descendant has listed this nickname as being another sibling (who didn't exist) and so many trees have blindly copied this wrong info. Very frustrating! I try to make a point of NEVER adding anything or anyone new unless I can be absolutely sure and back it up. Also, going back and looking at certificates etc for the umpteenth time almost always reveals something new!

[RustyWalker]

Transcriptions all need verifying against the original when possible. I'm using FindMyPast to research here in England, and though I'm sure the transcribers all did their best, they don't know who these people were or where they came from. They do appreciate submitting error reports for mistranscriptions too, so future researchers can find what they're looking for. Caveat: they specify error reports are for mistranscriptions only, not for perceived factual errors in originals. That's not their function.

[jenniferdoyle]

Thank you much for making this video! You've addressed every concern I've had, ever since discovering so many errors in the family trees that my own relatives have constructed. Your excellent video makes me realize I am not alone! I never attach a record to my tree until I've cross-referenced several records of the person I am researching and am absolutely certain that the record is indeed relevant.

[qashqai]

In the late '70s, My father lived in the Southern Part of Indiana. There he would go to graveyards, court house, churches and interview the older members still around. He took volumes of notes. During this time, I lived in Philadelphia. I would go to the local branch of the National Archives for 2 hours a week. I would scan through the microfilm of the U.S. Census. Looking at these films for Southern Indiana in 1850 to the latest one available. We were researching about 8 names, 4 on each side. If I saw one of those names in the census, I would create a Family Sheet for them. In a couple of years I had over 300 of them. When I ran across the same family in the next census, I would update the old sheet. Then they closed the Philly Branch. I purchased a software package. By the time I had entered all the family sheet data for those that I was sure were related, I still had over 100 that I couldn't use yet. Since then, I pull out the Promising File every year and see if any more of them not fit into my tree. Maybe 4 each year get promoted. Dad passed on in 1983. I got all his notes. About half of them were not in the tree when I got them. About 75% of them are now. Last week, in reviewing Dad's notes, I found 2 more families that had given me fits. His notes occupy 8 three ring binders an inch thick. I never through paper notes away. I find things every month that I can't believe I missed the 10th time I looked at it.

[traceybradshaw]

Oh my goodness - this should be compulsory viewing for anyone considering online family tree research. You have verbalised everything that my fellow researching cousin and I lament about often when we come across so many mixed up trees that contain our ancestors with incorrect spouses, children, dates and places. Then it’s perpetuated by people that practice genealogy by copying everyone else’s trees verbatim, not adding or checking sources or adding all of the hints without checking them 😱
I am saving this to share with every fledgling family tree researcher I come across - thank you for your words of wisdom 🥰

[bellelove]

I can attest to the going back to your notes sometimes we forget about.
My grandmother provided a wealth of information so those notes are truly invaluable.

[tdutahdebate]

I have fallen into that trap of "this must be the right records" until I realized that they had a different parent listed in another record which made my tree confused about where I went wrong. I started my tree over then found the error. Now I wait until I find at least 3-4 other records proving that lineage before adding a new person to my tree. I question those people who have 100k+ people on their trees and have only been doing research for 2-3 years, I have been doing research for 40 years and only have 5505 people on my tree.

[squirehobbs]

This video is a must for all researchers, I've been at this for twenty-five years and know you are so correct. I made early mistakes and communicated with others to get back on track. There are so many family trees I've found linking my family in error they obviously haven't found you yet. The best part is successfully connecting with legitimate distant cousins and building together.

[cgeorge]

“Attaching a Family Tree can really mess things up”. Ever since Family Search allowed people to change my tree which we spent 45 years on has made it very difficult to keep things straight. Most times now I just throw up my hands and say “Forget It.”

[audreyg]

I like that you are telling family historians this out loud. The best place to start with family history is with you, your grandparents and so forth. I come from two very, very, large families in my area and a lot of family historians have done a lot of work for me. Yes they are very careful how they do it. They have taught me well

[behunin]

Love your video. Am going through exactly what your discussion has been about. No sources, sources incorrectly attached, reattachments of known incorrect genealogies by kids going off old but incorrect paper family sheets, etc.

Also, people creating based on a desire to not be irrelevant as a family member. Too many opportunities for failure.

Thx