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Originally Posted by yorkietalkjilly  My ex-husband has always researched his and others family genealogies as a hobby he took up from his grandfather, but he's a bit of a purist and has traveled a good bit to complete research or fully check out a reference or lead. He's even check out grouped family cemetery headstones to be sure the Christian family names, dates of birth/death are consistent to further fact-check the person he's tracking.
I remember he long ago decided that there are far too quick presumptions & improper conclusions drawn due to inadequate research, rushing to complete the investigation by genealogy services, due to the proximity/propinquity of people of same/similar Christian and/or surnames, age, appearance or occupation; and that there are many, many errors in old records, including government, church, cemetery, medical, old newspaper records, etc., due to sloppiness, abject lying in listing NOK, misspellings, a person officially or unofficially changing their name, use of aliases, poor handwriting in official documents, poor condition of the actual records, or mistakes in mixing up one name or person with another. |
We have a couple of family members on both sides of my family who put together books based on their research and a lot of it was wrong, including basics about our current family. Definitely verify through official documents.
We also have the problem of family members who changed names, oral histories, and what not around WWI - WWII because of German connections, and name spelling changes when they came to the US.
We have a bunch of original documents from my dad's family going back to the Netherlands, but the translations from Dutch to English are sketchy.