Always Include A Source

This weekend, as I visited a couple of cemeteries, I was reminded that the information others add to your family tree isn’t always accurate.

This is why the lesson my mother taught me to always provide a source is so important.

Here’s one example of why sourcing matters:

When I first discovered my biological father and asked for his help with my family history, he gave me access to his Ancestry tree. I trusted the information and added it to my own tree.

A few years later, I decided to start verifying and sourcing that information to fill in some gaps. As I searched for a birth certificate for my paternal grandfather, I had a hard time finding it.

Eventually, I did find it, but only after realizing I had been searching for the incorrect name of his mother.

In the past, others had assumed his mother was a woman named Edith because census records listed his parents as Joseph and Edith. What I later discovered was that his biological mother, Mary, had died from complications during childbirth. Joseph remarried when my grandfather was still an infant, which is why Edith appeared in later records.

This experience was a powerful reminder: records tell a story, but only when we take the time to look deeper and verify the details.

Lesson learned: Always provide sources for your research!