Expanded Commentary on the Rules of Genealogy: Rule Three

I published the first six Rules of Genealogy back on July 1, 2014. See "Six of the Basic Rules of Genealogy." This short list included the most famous and basic rule of genealogy: "When the baby was born, the mother was there." I added four rules in a post back on August 11, 2017, entitled, "New Rules Added to the old: The Rules of Genealogy Revisited." One more Rule was added to the list on August 2, 2018, in a post entitled, "A New Rule Added: The Rules of Genealogy Revisited Again." You can go back to these original posts to see my original comments and the entire list of Rules.

In this series, I am reviewing each of the Rules and expanding on the reasoning and background of each.

Rule Three: Every person who ever lived has a unique birth order and a unique set of biological parents.

This Rule addresses the challenge of adoptions, foster children, guardianships, stepchildren, and other relationships that may exist in different times and different cultures. You might not see the importance of this Rule unless you have struggled with the identity of an ancestor that may or may not belong in a family. In the recent past, this Rule has been reinforced by the ascendancy of DNA testing as an accepted part of genealogical research. Many of my friends and acquaintances have been surprised to find that the traditional view of their ancestry is not supported by their DNA test. This is particularly true of those who have discovered that they were adopted or that one of their "known" ancestors was not actually their genetic ancestor.

This Rule also implies the need to be acquainted with the changes in the laws of adoption over the years. Adoption in the United States can be divided into two major time periods: before and after the passage of the first modern adoption laws beginning in 1851. In both eras, the idea of protecting the child from knowledge of the adoption has, in many cases, made determining the ancestry of an adoptive child extremely difficult. For example, a tradition in my family was that a particular ancestor was "adopted." After searching for years, I found one church record with the notation that he was adopted. It was only with the advent of online digitized records that we found a likely set of parents for this individual. In this particular case, DNA testing was not reasonably available and in any event, an extensive DNA test among his descendants would not identify his parents.

Here are a few links to websites with information about the history of adoption in the United States. Adoption laws are likely unique in almost every other country in the world.

• What You Need to Know About the History of Adoption
• Adoption History in Brief
• A Brief History of Adoption
• History of Adoption Practices in the United States
• The History of Adoption

So why do we have to be reminded that every person has a unique birth order as well as a unique set of biological parents?

It is apparent from looking at online family trees that there are a multitude of "opinions" about the biological makeup of some families. Here is an extreme example from the FamilySearch.org Family Tree:

In this case, the list goes on. One of the entries here has the following:

You might look at the dates given in this particular entry. At least three of the children were born after the listed wife's death date. Rule Six is aimed at this common type of error. There is no reason to list all of these potential wives. Obviously, some extensive research is needed before the identity and relationship of these people can be decided. It might be interesting to note that many of the people listed have multiple record sources. 

There are multiple considerations that need to be taken into account before concluding that a child is the child of a particular set of parents. Fundamentally, the birth and death dates of the parents and date of the birth of the child should always be considered. Adoption may be more difficult to detect but continued research or in some cases, DNA testing, may indicate that a child was adopted. 

As is the case with all of the basic Rules of Genealogy, this Rule is a reminder that obvious relationships may not be accurate.