How Accurate Is Your Genealogical Research Information
May 1, 2025
Intermediate/Advanced Level Article
How Accurate Is Your Genealogical Research Information
The accuracy of genealogical information relies heavily on the quality and reliability of the original historical records and the researcher's evaluation of that evidence. There are many factors that can impact the accuracy of what you locate in the research process. Here are some basic examples.
People in the past may have put the wrong information on old records, either from genuinely not knowing, or from having something they wanted to hide.
Mistakes can be made in transcriptions of documents from one location to another; even tombstones are known to sometimes have erroneous information on them from the stone cutter.
Census takers make mistakes in the spelling of names (and even the dates and places of birth of the householders they enumerate).
Except for mother/child relationships (and even these might be non-biological without you knowing it if there was a secret adoption), genealogy is never a 100 percent sure thing.
Many published family genealogies from the 19thcentury often relied on legend, gossip, and the erroneous family stories other people gave them.
Blindly accepting the information found using online resources such as Ancestry, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, FindMyPast and MyHeritage, can lead you astray in a multiple ways. The TV ads make it look like all you must do is plug in a relative's name, and poof instant family history appears. This is especially true with family trees. These “connections” aren’t reviewed by those sites. There isn't an approval process. Literally anybody can put anything in a family tree.
Because so many genealogists do not take the time to analyze the accuracy of citations found in print and online sources, especially family trees, mistakes are spread everywhere including many reputable works.
The bottom line is that genealogy research involves a lot of guesswork and uncertainty. There is a lot of room for human error in genealogy research, and you will undoubtedly come across it, either in the work of others or through mistakes you make in your own work. Even the best genealogists will occasionally discover they got an entire line wrong based on one incorrect assumption, misinterpretation of a record, or by obtaining a faulty record. With so much room for making mistakes, how do you know you’ve gotten it right? How do you know if your genealogy research is successful?
Here are some proven strategies that many experts in the field recommend. While no strategy is 100% foolproof, these options have proven track records to help put you in the best possible position for success.
Analyze multiple record sources. The goal is to locate the same information in more than one set of records. The more often a family relationship, name, birth or death date, marriage date, or another important piece of family information is repeated through various record sets, the more likely it is to be correct. This is especially true if the records are primary records (records generated at the time of the event they mention). Examples would be a. Birth and death certificates b. Old newspaper articles containing birth and death announcements or related articles to the events. c. Military service and/or pension records d. Wills and probate packets.
Your research is consistent with finding matches in the research of other people. a. Using online sources is a good way to encounter people who may be distant cousins or relatives by marriage who are working on your line. b. If you discover that your research matches their findings, document the sources you both used to arrive at your conclusions.
Don’t ignore the older print sources. a. While they can be somewhat error prone at times, research has proven the information is correct more often than not. b. Most of them come with annotations in the form of footnotes and/or endnotes as to where the author got the records used to compile the information. c. Use these sources and find them yourself. It is always good genealogical practice to look at the original record in any case. You may find information on it the original researcher missed. If you can go through all the sources the author used and still come to the same conclusions as him or her, then you can be as sure as you can be that your research is accurate.
There is nothing wrong with making educated guesses, going with the preponderance of evidence (knowing that uncovering new evidence is always a possibility) or investigating wild assumptions if you see potential evidence that they might be true. a. There is nothing wrong with taking a leap of faith in our conclusions due to a lack of solid evidence. b. Even the well-respected genealogical journals often contain articles where the author made their conclusion based on an assumption. c. When your assumptions are backed up with ample amounts of secondary evidence (evidence where the record doesn’t outright state a family relationship or date, but one can be inferred from the information that is there) that can change circumstances. d. Of course, the best thing is if you one day discover a primary record that confirms all of this secondary evidence. Keep looking for a primary source, even if you have a lot of secondary evidence. Just because you haven’t found one yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It may be out there waiting for you to find it.
Get your DNA tested. a. DNA has a proven track record for proving or disproving e family relationships that would once have been impossible to confirm. b. Sharing your results plus including a family tree can definitely put you in a position to locate family members that you never knew about. While DNA may not be able to tell you the exact names of your particular ancestors, it can definitely put you in a suspected ancestor’s family (or take you out of it) without a doubt. c. The more people you can get to take the test, the more accurate your results will be, especially if one person doesn’t match up with all of the rest of the people who tested into the family. DNA offers the surest way to confirm the success of your genealogy research, as there is no room for human error in DNA results.
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