Most Common Research Mistakes

[John Winn]

That good advice goes even for current events. There was a newspaper article about a foreign tourist, headed for Portland (Oregon), who managed to wind up in Portland (Maine)--probably because he didn't understand about US state geography. Because both Portlands are on the ocean (albeit a different ocean), his mistake wasn't immediately obvious to him.

For the record, Portland, Oregon isn't on the ocean (but not too far away).

 

[Fairfield]

For the record, Portland, Oregon isn't on the ocean (but not too far away).

Apparently it was close enough to confuse this poor man. Remember, he only had a map--and an imperfect grasp of American geography.

 

[rgtaylor61]

The surname needn't even be moderately common. I once was tracing a family named Quackenbush (@lupaglupa can attest that this isn't infrequent in NYC) that went to South Carolina. Said I to my self, "this is going to be easy" but do you have any idea how many Quackenbushes I found in South Carolina?

Oh yes..i live in South Carolina and ive run across it many times through work customers.

 

[Biscoitos]

I do a lot of genealogy research, usually for other people, and that means I have lots of opportunities to look at other people's genealogy research. The vast majority of genealogy you find online was compiled by amateurs. Looking at different family trees I see the same mistakes come up over and over again. They can all fall under one big heading which would be not taking enough time when doing research. But to break it down in a way that I hope will help others avoid making these common errors, here's my top five list (in no particular order):

1. Ignoring the original document - researchers should never accept only the information a genealogy program gives them in an easy "save here" format. If the original document is available, take the time to look at it! Often genealogy websites will only transcribe parts of a document, leaving lots of good information on the page unnoted. Taking the time to glean those facts can add a whole new layer to what you learn from your research. Looking at the original can also help you catch the all-too-frequent transcription errors.

2. Confusing town and county level records - if I had a dollar for every time I had seen the wrong place name in a record because the researchers thought a county record was a town record and logged the town name in - often in a different county! - I'd be a millionaire. Many records are kept at the county level and should be logged that way. It's a quick thing to look at and can cause great confusion if ignored.

3. Using facts you haven't confirmed - all too often you hit a wall in your research and you find someone else, or even several someone elses, have a nifty solution with a record that sorta, kinda, oughta fit and it's oh so tempting to just click it and add it. Don't. Just, don't. You don't have to reject every fact you find. Other people's work can be really helpful. Just check it and double check it. If it's accurate you should be able to easily prove it. If it's not, you've saved yourself the trouble of fixing it later.

4. Taking "no" for an answer - the amount of information available on the internet is astounding and what you can find with a simple search is really impressive. Many people seem to think that if they can't find it easily online it must not exist. That's an easy - and wrong - idea to embrace. The fact is huge amounts of material are out there ready to be found if you put in some effort. And even more material is out in the <gasp> real world, waiting to be digitized.

5. Keeping facts without sources - total transparency, I fail at this one myself all too often. You find something online that fills a hole and you quickly add it to your research and you just don't quite take the time to put down your source and then... when you need to double check it you can't find it. Arrgg! Do your future self and all the people who come after you a big huge favor and write down where you got your information.

I know other researchers must agree or disagree with this list - what mistakes do you see all too often?

Making the mistake of "knowing" that the first person you encounter with the same name as your ancestor/research subject is definitely the one you are looking for. People are sometimes in too big of a hurry, or so excited to have found their link to someone important. Then error compounds error.
This seems to be a common problem for those looking to expand ther family tree.
However, I do notice that on CWT a great deal of excellent fact checking is done by posters offering assistance and this type of error is avoided.

 

[Kurtlg]

There is an issue with my Great-great uncle George Veitengruber. He was born Johann George Veitengruber in Bavaria but came with his family to Frankenmuth , Michigan in the 1840s. He served in the 3rd Michigan cavalry. Some one posted that he served in the 76th Pennsylvania. That George Veitengruber has a different birthdate and birth name. Mine had several brothers with the first name Johann and they were all called by their middle names. I have records from Johann George and know he was not in the 76th Pennsylvania. We are attempting to get Find a Grave corrected and I have a friend who has a contact with the Veitengruber family in Frankenmuth so we will see how it goes. Whoever posted the 76th Pennsylvania didn't do a very good job of research.

 

[Fairfield]

There is an issue with my Great-great uncle George Veitengruber. He was born Johann George Veitengruber in Bavaria but came with his family to Frankenmuth , Michigan in the 1840s. He served in the 3rd Michigan cavalry. Some one posted that he served in the 76th Pennsylvania. That George Veitengruber has a different birthdate and birth name. Mine had several brothers with the first name Johann and they were all called by their middle names. I have records from Johann George and know he was not in the 76th Pennsylvania. We are attempting to get Find a Grave corrected and I have a friend who has a contact with the Veitengruber family in Frankenmuth so we will see how it goes. Whoever posted the 76th Pennsylvania didn't do a very good job of research.

Immigrants had a tough time of it (genealogically speaking). Unfamiliar names, unfamiliar practices and unintelligible accents all combined to culminate in real confusion. Here I am going to make my usual plea to NOT rely on online trees and sites such as Find A Grave--Americanized descendants relying on confused secondary sources only add to the problem.

I have Norwegian immigrant ancestors and so I feel for you!

 

[Kurtlg]

Immigrants had a tough time of it (genealogically speaking). Unfamiliar names, unfamiliar practices and unintelligible accents all combined to culminate in real confusion. Here I am going to make my usual plea to NOT rely on online trees and sites such as Find A Grave--Americanized descendants relying on confused secondary sources only add to the problem.

I have Norwegian immigrant ancestors and so I feel for you!

There is a third George Veitengruber listed in the Pennsylvania 26th militia . The 76th Pennsylvania George might also be the 26th militia George but he is not directly related so I won't look into that . Two famous units and maybe with a last name like that he could be a distant relative.

 

[35th MA InfRegt]

As an amateur researcher, I am quite certain I have made every possible mistake you can. And only yesterday did I realize that at the very beginning of my research career, I had made one of the biggest mistakes you can make. I took an oral statement made by my mother nearly fifty years ago at face value, sending me down a rabbit hole fruitlessly trying to find evidence of a man, who in the end, I realized did not exist.

You see, my mother, then in her late sixties, had told me her paternal grandfather, a French-speaking emigree from Belgium, had served in the Civil War, been captured and to hear her tell it, tortured by his Confederate captors. She even produced a diary (now sadly missing) to corroborate the story, but between water damage, faded ink, missing pages, and completely illegible handwriting, I was not even able to verify his name, let alone the unit he was supposedly assigned to.

Completely stymied, I gave up the search for years at a time. A couple of days ago, I decided to revisit the issue one last time. No luck. And then, while lying in my bed, I had an insight that I am embarrassed to say, had never occured to me before. What, I asked myself, if my mother had gotten her grandfather's mixed up? Elderly, with a fading memory and experiencing some cognitive decline, had my mother mistakenly identified her paternal grandfather as a Civil War veteran, when it was her maternal grandfather I should have been investigating?

Armed with this insight, I hurried over to Find a Grave, and searched out my maternal grandmother's gravesite. And there I discovered some kindly soul had finally photographed that grave. The inscription even provided me with her maiden name. Her father's surname.that had previously been unknown to me.
.
Several hours of searching on Google later, I had the barebone outline of an extraordinary story that others unknown to me had already worked out, Jean-Jacques Grosjean, born in 1839, in Belgium if his military records on Fold3 can be believed, arrived in the United States in the summer of 1864, part of a contingent of Belgian and German immigrants enticed or deceived into enlisting into the 35th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Grosjean entered the service under his mother's maiden name. Or rather, a misspelled version of that name. Jacques Sneyers was how the army knew him. Mustered into the regiment on the 23rd of July, 1864, and sent into battle nearly immediately with little or no training, Grosjean was captured by the Confederates on the 30th of September, 1864.

His records indicate that he was restored to duty on April 27th, 1865. The circumstances under which this occurred remain a mystery but his file contains a nasty allegation. To wit, Private Jacques Sneyers was alleged to have enlisted in the Confederate Army while a prisoner of war. The Army, on getting him back, took no action, but simply transferred him to the 29th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and even allowed him to enlist in the regular army, finally discharging him in 1869.

Grosjean moved to Canada in 1870, and assimilated into the French-Canadian community. His daughter, Clementine Grosjean Fortin born in 1873, had in 1913, at the approximate age of forty, a daughter, Loreto M. Smith, the woman who in 1959, fostered and finally adopted the boy who grew up to write this post. Grosjean himself died in 1909, and was buried in an obscure little community just outside my hometown of Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. For unknown reasons, his family buried him under the name he had used in the Union Army, complete with another misspelling. His widow, Marie Fortin, collected a small pension from the US government until her death in 1922.

This story is still a work in progress, and so far, I have a lot more questions than answers. I am pretty cautiously optimistic that I have finally identified my ancestor, but much work remains to be done to fully corroborate it. Hopefully, I will make fewer mistakes going forward while I work to flesh out the tale

 

[Virginia Dave]

This is a really good thread.

I haven't had a chance to do genealogy in a few years, but I found quite a bit of the family lore to be wrong. One side that was supposed to be all Confederate had a decidedly more flexible sense of allegiance than what I'd be told. On another side, an ancestor who had always been written off as just dying young had quite the infamous local crime spree, including but not limited to stealing mules and killing someone at church, and was "shot accidentally during a card game." (That was my grandma's side of the family, and we both found it hilarious. Her aunts much less so.) Another side was supposed to be 100% German, but they're really only about 3/8 German. My grandparents on that side were orphaned as children and raised by older siblings. I think the family history got badly distorted in the process, even more so than usual. I also found a bizarre minor cult leader on that side. I enjoy the misbehaved ancestors. I have a lot of them, and I just find it interesting and entertaining. I mean, it's not like I'm the one stealing mules and killing people at church.

I'd also venture to say that really only a small number of the information of interest to a genealogist is digitized. It's very tempting to only rely on Ancestry or other websites, but local museums, historical societies, and libraries can really be your best friend.

As for the family cemeteries, I have at least 2 neighbors who've buried relatives on their land in the 21st century. Not as a crime thing but also not as an addition to an already established family cemetery. So, it's not just a relic of the past in some areas, though it's also not super common here.

I am like you I love finding skeletons in the closet. Makes things more interesting. LOL

 

[Fairfield]

As an amateur researcher, I am quite certain I have made every possible mistake you can. And only yesterday did I realize that at the very beginning of my research career, I had made one of the biggest mistakes you can make. I took an oral statement made by my mother nearly fifty years ago at face value, sending me down a rabbit hole fruitlessly trying to find evidence of a man, who in the end, I realized did not exist.

I'd not beat myself up on this. Yours is a very frequent mistake that has bedeviled even professionals. With that in mind, I'd review the truths that you found online (those posters are as capable of error as anyone else).

Years ago my mother told me that one of her courtesy cousins had been shot down and killed during WW2--but, when I asked the man's nephew (with whom I was comparing family notes) about the valiant death, he replied 'Why, Uncle Jim died just last year!" Now the question is, why did his relatives allow my mother to believe that he was dead? Another story there.

Inside every mangled family story is a kernel of a hidden truth. I'd re-examine that maternal great-grandfather; for example, the events may be accurate...but not the war.

 

[JLPoff]

There is not only a mistake made because of a faulty knowledge of history--but simply because of faulty knowledge in general about world differences.

Because of the ethnic make-up of our area, I do a lot of French-Canadian genealogy; the F-C's have a different system. I once worked with one frustrated individual who declared "Why can't those people keep their records in a decent fashion like we do?"

Poor cross-cultural skills also showed up in an online tree in which the compiled claimed to be from a line of Norwegian church worthies. What this person had done was to mistranslate "den eldre" as "the elder" (meaning a church elder). However, in Norway, it wasn't unheard of to have two living siblings with the same name; they were differentiated as "the older" (den eldre) and "the younger" (den yngre).

I had Norwegian relatives where the father was named Ole Olsen and 2 of his sons were also named Ole Olsen. The mother's patronymic was Olsdatter. On the census they were listed as Ole Olsen the eldest, Ole Olsen the elder and Ole Olsen the younger.

 

[Story]

This story is still a work in progress, and so far, I have a lot more questions than answers. I am pretty cautiously optimistic that I have finally identified my ancestor, but much work remains to be done to fully corroborate it. Hopefully, I will make fewer mistakes going forward while I work to flesh out the tale

At some point you'll consider yourself at the end of this road and submit the tale for publication somewheres.

Who knows what'll fall out of the family tree when random strangers start reading it?

 

[Fairfield]

I had Norwegian relatives where the father was named Ole Olsen and 2 of his sons were also named Ole Olsen. The mother's patronymic was Olsdatter. On the census they were listed as Ole Olsen the eldest, Ole Olsen the elder and Ole Olsen the younger.

"This is my brother Daryl and this is my other brother Daryl".

You're facing a double-whammy: it's said that the nightmare of every Norwegian genealogist is finding an ancestor named "Ole Olsen"!