Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy: The definitive reference guide to tracing your family history. Nick Barratt
all your hard work, not to mention that it makes finding documents and notes you need to work from a bit of a nightmare.
There are various filing systems you can adapt to suit your own purposes. It is worth investing in a decent expandable file with plenty of dividers and labels. And you may prefer to showcase some key documents in a portfolio file to keep them pristine. There are many ways of organizing your paperwork. You might want to classify your notes alphabetically by surname, or perhaps keep all the notes from one archive visit together, but it does help to keep copies of original documents together with the relevant notes. It can be useful to separate your notes for each side of the family, and then by surname and branch, especially if the same surname appears in two different branches.
If you are looking after original documents on behalf of your family, it is important to keep them away from heat, damp and direct light to prevent them from deteriorating. Where possible original documents, particularly photographs, should be stored in strong, acid-free boxes, but if you do decide to keep them in a plastic folder with the rest of your notes, you should place each document inside two thin sheets of acid-free paper to prevent the plastic from damaging them. There are companies that advertise in family history magazines or that can be found online who specialize in products that preserve fragile documents for family historians. If you are unsure, have a chat with your nearest archivist for further advice.
If you have a computer, you may want to consider typing up your notes so that you can create a new folder for each surname. It does help to keep the paper copies of your notes, though, in case you need to take them with you on a future visit to an archive. If you do opt for keeping an electronic record of your research, it’s handy to have one central document that compiles all of your notes, with references to where each piece of information comes from.
There is a multitude of genealogy software packages on the market with the aim of making this easy to do. They also enable you to organize the data you enter into different styles of family trees, charts, reports and indexes, which is almost impossible to do if you are just using a word-processing package. If you choose the right type of genealogy software, you will find that you can not only use it to store all your research, including a fact file of each individual linked up with images of photos and documents, audio recordings of interviews with family members, family holiday videos, and notes about the sources you have found, but you can simultaneously do some of your research online by connecting to genealogy websites that are compatible with your chosen software and migrate the online records you find into your family file. Don’t be scared to invest in a package to play around with, and learn how to get the most out of it as you go along.
The tips, hints and advice in this chapter will help you to achieve far more when you actually start looking for documents, and to make the most of your time in archives and research institutions. We also introduce the amazing array of resources now available online, give some advice about the pitfalls of Internet research, and what to do when you get stuck with your research and need a little shove in the right direction.
However, before you start worrying about where to look for help, here are a few useful tips to help you avoid making mistakes in the first place!
Avoiding Mistakes Early On
There is nothing more exasperating than spending several hours in an archive and a small fortune on certificates only to realize you’ve been following the wrong branch of people, simply because a small mistake was made early on. This can easily happen if you don’t order every registration certificate for a person and ensure each name, date, place and occupation on your family tree is substantiated with as much documentation as possible.
Never Assume …
Cross-referencing sources is essential, but if you cannot find conclusive evidence then do not just assume that links to earlier generations are correct, even if they look likely. Just because the name and date appear to be right doesn’t mean you’ve found the right person.
CASE EXAMPLE
Question the evidence
When researching Ian Hislop’s family tree, two people called Murdo Matheson were found living at the same time, in the same place, and who joined the same regiment in the late eighteenth century. Painstaking research was required to work out which Murdo Matheson was related to Ian, only solved by comparing the clasps on a medal awarded to Ian’s relative, which had been passed down through the family, with the movements of each battalion and therefore eliminating the ‘wrong’ one.
If you have run into problems, leave that branch for the time being and keep pushing back on neighbouring branches that might give you more clues. For example, it is possible to link witnesses’ names on a marriage certificate to family members who appear on earlier census returns to strengthen the case that you have found the right person, and therefore help you to fit the jigsaw together.
Where possible try to locate more than one source to corroborate information you have already found. If you discover that there is no concrete evidence whatsoever to verify a link, make a list of all the circumstantial evidence that led you to your initial assumption, and continue forward, making a note that you have not found firm supporting documentation.
‘Try to locate more than one source to corroborate information you have already found.’
Question the Evidence
You should always question the reliability, or at the very least the historical context, of every document you encounter. Primary evidence can contain errors, but if you have enough different sources available so that you can compare the vital details for each ancestor, then you should be able to work out which sources are accurate by a process of elimination. For example, census returns can sometimes give the wrong ages and can contain misspellings if names have been inaccurately transcribed from the original forms. Death certificates are also known to contain mistakes, especially if a young and distant relative, or doctor who was unsure of the facts, registered the death.
Our ancestors were prone to stretching the truth when asked about their age, or were themselves unsure of their own year of birth in times when paperwork and the process of filling out forms was far less common than it is today, which can explain discrepancies between a birth certificate and an age given on the same person’s marriage certificate. Any evidence of our ancestor’s existence is important, but you should be cautious when using this evidence.
Concentrate!
Simple mistakes are easy to avoid just by staying focused and alert. Keep checking the exact spelling of the names you are searching for so that you don’t waste half an hour looking for the birth of James John Clark, when it should have been John James Clarke. And it might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to confuse the marriage indexes for the birth indexes, so always double-check you are looking at the right set of documents.
HOW TO …
… avoid annoying mistakes
1. Double-check each fact; don’t assume it is right
2. Corroborate each source with another if possible
3. Beware! Primary documents contain mistakes
4. Double-check name spellings
Has Your Tree Been Researched Before?
Don’t