A little help needed from the experts

[Katehurst15]

Thank you
i haven't got any actual certificates of anything I'm just going off what's online. I may purchase some when I've finished my research.

[AntonyM]

Thank you
i haven't got any actual certificates of anything I'm just going off what's online. I may purchase some when I've finished my research.

Just using on-line information means you are guessing and making assumptions - what's on-line is incomplete and very often wrong. The certificates (and other original records) are how you do the research, not for afterwards.

[Olde Crone Holden]

My father was practically brought up by his maternal grandmother, spent a lot of time with her and knew all sorts of things about her and her family. I didn't bother getting her certs, just plunged into tracing her ancestors which I did, going back 200 years. This was pre-internet, when research was hard and required going to various archives with all the additional expense that incurred.

When the internet arrived I decided I would just round off my research by getting the actual certificates for my dad's grandmother. HA! She was his second wife and was no blood relation to my father. 200 years-worth of research wasted, just because I thought I "knew".

Yes, it is compelling to do a sketch tree because it seems so easy and quick on the internet. But if you are serious about this hobby, you have to get the certs, and sooner rather than later, otherwise you may find you have done someone else's tree and not your own!

OC

[JBee]

I did exactly the same as OC - thought my grandfather's name was Patrick but when I eventually got the certificate it was Francis - there were only two families with that surname in the town but due to mis-spellings I missed the other family which turned out to be the right one. A lot of time, money and travel wasted researching the wrong line.

I still have all the wrong info in a file waiting to find someone researching that family. Haven't found any connection to the other family even though both families came from Ireland.

So make sure you check at every stage with certificates and never assume unless you want to be taken down a blind alley and your research found to be incorrect at a later and more expensive stage.

[Katehurst15]

I have thought about it because obviously that's the truth but they cost money which I haven't got at the moment as I'm on maternity leave, but luckily I have had a huge amount of information from family members and a tree which my dad started before he died so I know what I have is the truth up to a certain extent. It's this part of the tree now that Im starting to get mixed results as nobody has ever gone back this far really and people had so many children back in the 1800's it's daft.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Kate

I appreciate that this is an expensive hobby BUT I'm sorry, there is no Good Fairy of genealogy to take pity on a lack of funds and make sure your guesses are right!

Unfortunately, you don't know that what your family has told you is fact - what I was told wasn't fact, because although my father THOUGHT she was his grandmother, she wasn't. Until very recently, families went to a lot of trouble to conceal embarrassing facts like illegitimacy, divorce, bigamy, never marrying, etc. Your relatives only know what they were told, not necessarily the facts.

Another wrong turn in my tree was my 2 x GGF. There he was on census with his family, middle child of ten, birth nicely registered. I bought the cert and all was as it should have been. Baptisms of all ten siblings were on Familysearch. I researched in depth but eventually felt slightly uneasy because although he was the eldest surviving son, he did not inherit the farm which had been in the family for 350 years. I decided to take my own advice (!) and ordered the film from the LDS to look at the original records.

Well! What a surprise! Nine of the ten siblings correctly baptised...but not my 2 x GGF. After much headscratching, I found him baptised in a nearby parish, the illegitimate son of the sister of the man who brought him up. His natural father's name was given in the register.

Several lessons to be learned here.

1. LDS record TRANSCRIPTIONS can be falsified. Presumably the person who falsified this one was a relative who didn't wish the stigma of illegitimacy to be seen online. In the old days, the LDS accepted any donated transcriptions of records in good faith. No one checked them.

2. LDS transcriptions (or any other transcriptions for that matter) do not always include vital marginal information - in this case the name of the natural father.

3. People lied to the Registrar, to save face usually, or maybe just because they didn't think it was any of his business. I find they rarely lied to the Vicar, though! My 2 x GGF had been falsely registered, but truthfully baptised. His birth mother died shortly after his birth and his aunt and uncle, who had lost a baby that year, took him on and brought him up as their own child.

4. Census transcriptions tell you only who was where on a given night. Everything else is an assumption you draw from what was said/transcribed etc. It isn't actually FACT.

Genealogy is a wonderful hobby. It is full of potholes for the unwary and some of those potholes can be very deep indeed!

OC

[AntonyM]

They do cost money, but you can keep that down and spread it out by staring with the ones you need to prove the key relationships. Family members often get things wrong or confused, and like you I started with a tree my father did years ago before he died, and my research since has shown he got it about 60% right, but lots on it was wrong and lots missing. I found the same with a tree an aunt on the other side of my family put together (using info she was told by other family members) ... she was also about 60% right, but had one line completely wrong.

Enjoy researching, but don't assume anything is right unless you have a document or source to prove it. Ancestry is full of user trees with no sources which are useless (and dangerous) to other researchers.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Possibly my dates are wrong as that is a very strong find from night owl. And the Thomas Brightmore I have is quite a bit older than Eva.

Well, it seems perhaps you may already have gone awry at the start of your journey!
Not all records are on the internet, so relying purely on online resources can soon result in people going astray.
An alternative to buying certs is using the parish registers for baptisms, marriages and funerals - but you need to travel to the record office where the microfilmed records of the relevant parishes are kept, which costs time and money.

Every hobby carries costs - the price of buying a tennis racquet & balls & hiring a court; buying papers, cards, embellishments etc for paper-craft; with genealogy it's buying certificates to establish the relationships between the generations.

Jay