Starting Your Genealogical Investigations

 

I recently received a request for help with starting some genealogical research. The person asking for help in an email relating that his great-grandfather came from an eastern European country. I agreed to help and asked for some basic information about the name of the person, the place where some event in that person's life had occurred, and a date of an event even if the date was approximate. Hmm. Does this sound familiar? I hope so. So far, he has given me a date, a name, and the name of a country that did not exist at the time of the date given. Granted, he may not know any more details about this person but I can't help him with suggestions other than to try and find a more definite place where the ancestor lived. Before you write to me, of course, I have also told him to try and find information from his surviving family members.

This type of correspondence is fairly common. One of the most common instructions given to budding genealogists involves collecting your own genealogical information and then gathering information from existing relatives, particularly older relatives. Because seasoned genealogists hear this admonition all the time, they tend to think that this step is obvious. It is not obvious. Additionally, sometimes the information given by relatives may be confusing or inaccurate. So let's start with a different emphasis.

Rather than generally advise people to gather information, how about starting with a particular goal? Here are some questions that might be more appropriate than a general admonition. 

Where were you born? Do you have a birth certificate or other document evidencing your birth and showing your parents? Do you have the same documents for the members of your immediate family?

Now, this question can be expanded to include additional documentation and to also include parents, siblings, and any other near relatives. The key here is to document a parent/child relationship for every person. Next, the information should be entered into a genealogy program such as the free FamilySearch.org Family Tree. I would suggest avoiding programs that require a periodic subscription cost until the person percieves a need for additional resources. 

Now, this basic instruction includes additional requirements. The idea of documentation does include orally transmitted information from ancestors but where it is possible, that information should be verified with other documentation. The idea is to establish a pattern of only entering information that is support by some external substantiation. What happens when the person "inherits" a substantial amount of genealogical information from someone else? Usually, someone who is much older passes on a "lifetime" of accumulation. This sort of information needs to be closely examined to determine if there is documentary source information establishing each parent/child relationship. 

What else? If the core research is substantiated by documentation for each generational step backward in time, then there is a good basis for extending the pedigree further. Absent that kind of information, it is highly likely that the pedigree will be unsubstantiated or wrong. 

Now, how about a quick execise? Look at your existing pedigree and see if every line has documentary substantiation for every parent/child relationship. If there are children with no documentation identifying a parent, that is the end of that particular line even if the line apparently extends off into the distant past. 

This is called source-centric genealogical research and it is the only supportable way of extending family trees and any other method and any thing less than this is not going to be as accurate.