Away Out On a Limb

Tips and Tricks for stirring up clues

Even if you’re new to genealogy, you have probably already run across somebody posting a warning not to trust information from various common sources:

• “Hints” provided by major online research companies (Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, FamilySearch)

• Obituaries

• Other people’s online trees

• Published genealogies and local histories

• Wikipedia (Note: that link goes to Wikipedia’s explanation of why they are not a “reliable source”)

And yet, people who are just starting on their family history journey are also bombarded with advice to look for clues in all of those places—which can leave the new researcher feeling as helpless and paralyzed as the old timer in this bank robbery:

I suspect that the vast majority of potential new researchers are turned off by this conundrum, especially if they paid for a DNA test, only to find that DNA doesn’t tell you any of the stories they came looking for. Finding out that it will take work to tease out answers that you expected to have handed to you is always discouraging.

Hopefully, you are willing to put in some effort, but if you feel paralyzed, the best thing to do is ignore all of these generalized warnings and focus on specific questions that you can learn how to answer.

1. Map Out the Rabbit Holes—Then Look for the Rabbits

All of the best advice tells you to start with what you know. Build a free private tree in several of the major platforms. If you did your DNA test through Ancestry or FTDNA, start there—and then try FamilySearch, too. Keep your information about living people private, but when you get to your first generation of deceased ancestors, learn how to find and attach source records to their profiles. Once you have a favorite site, begin following the evidence you find, pushing out (siblings and cousins) and back (great- and multiple-great grandparents) to expand your tree.

I tend to gravitate toward a systematic approach. If I get stuck on finding a person’s biographical records, I will go through what I know about their parents and then (usually) their siblings, from oldest to youngest.

But the point is to build a framework around what you already know, and in the process of doing that, develop a list of questions you intend to answer.

Make sure that for each piece of evidence you add, you ask, “How do I know that this is correct?” Compare the facts from an obituary with what you know from the Census or from death records. Pay attention to who the informant was on the vital records.

If something doesn’t add up, DON’T THROW AWAY THE SOURCE—instead, make a note for yourself in a comment or note section that points out the discrepancy and explain why you think the “correct” information is correct and the “incorrect” information is wrong.

2. Don’t Fear the Hints—Just Don’t Trust Them

I’m most familiar with Ancestry’s hints system, and while I’m uneasy with most uses of AI, their ever-evolving fuzzy search algorithms have been more right than wrong over the years. Keep in mind that I’m not implying that hints can be accepted without review; I just mean that 10% of the time, their hints pan out quickly, 5% of the time they can be easily rejected out of hand… and 85% of the time, they raise questions and present useful leads.

As you review your hints, you should have specific questions you are trying to answer (see the previous section). If a hint raises more questions, add those new questions to your list—only dismiss hints if they:

• clearly do not apply to your ancestor

• duplicate information from a more reliable source (i.e., if another user uploaded an image of a record you already have)

• come from unsourced or unreliable records (for ex., I ignore all Geneanet hints in Ancestry because they come from unsourced trees ingested into Ancestry)

If you find that your list of questions is growing longer than your list of answers, that might be a good thing, because:

3. Old Family Mysteries Are No Match for Search Engines

Once you have enough records to build a basic biography for someone, you should know when and where they were born, when and where they died, and basic facts (marriages, children, etc.) in between. You should be constantly asking “How do you know that?” about those facts—and be prepared to change what you thought you knew in the face of new evidence.

But what you don’t know should also start to take shape. Did your ancestor move in their lifetime? What kinds of searches might tell you more about how and when they moved? Did your ancestor have non-relatives listed in their household? What can you learn about those people—are they more distant relatives, or just boarders/lodgers?

Answering these types of peripheral questions might give you unexpected answers to some of your other mysteries. Even if they don’t give you answers, they may pose questions that will help you find more sources.

When They Say “Don’t Trust”…

Being skeptical is the key—you never simply accept a fact without testing it against what you already know. And you never reject a fact just because it doesn’t fit with what you know on the surface.

Asking “How do I know that” until you have enough evidence to support (or refute) your biography is the task. You never “trust” your biography—you test it. Constantly.

But you will never learn anything if you hear “don’t trust” as “don’t look.” Sometimes, the biggest obstacle is not knowing to go look!

Well, okay then!