re: #62 engineer cat

been spending the afternoon tracing my family tree on ancestry.com

because of the jewish tendancy to name children after other people in the family i’ve had some aha! moments:

“yes! that must be the correct census record because they always said my sister was named after somebody called Rose!!!”

Ugh. OK, let me put on my genealogical librarian hat and pick on this a bit - starting with an anecdote. On ancestry.com there were not one, not two, but three different genealogies that ran backward from one of my ancestors. That is to say, my paternal grandfather had two different fathers and three different paternal grandfathers. (One of the ‘fathers’ listed had two different fathers.) That’s been fixed because a couple of us did real genealogies.

It happened because there were more than David Eli Spencers who crossed paths in the census documents. Well, that and the fact the mother of one of the two (the one who is not my ancestor) married a second husband when the first died. And some people wrote their genealogies based on what they thought they were seeing from the census.

Use the census as a guide but please, don’t consider it irrefutable proof. Instead find birth records and death records. Go to cemeteries and look at burial registers, many of which include family information (parents, spouse, children). A lot of families prior to the 19th century maintained some sort of internal document - the family bible being a common example. Be aware that such documents are simultaneously fully trusted and untrustworthy. (Ours does not list a many-great-uncle because his grandfather had disowned the father. Less drastic situations occur when the son or daughter goes to the far frontiers, or off to war, or any of a number of things that put them out of touch with the main branch.)

I’m glad for you that you’re finding the links, but be cautious.

And have fun.