Finding out that you've made a mistake

[Misselaineus]

Not sure if this might be repeating something already stated but the GRO now show the mothers Maiden name on their birth records which can be searched for free. This means that you are now able to identify siblings more easily. I was finally able to put a name to a great Aunt who I knew existed from the 1911 census but hadn't been able to name. Eureka!! There are a few pit falls to watch out for though. I was very confused for a while during one search. I wasn't ablle to find a marriage that fitteed until I realised that the lady in question had been married previously.
I have PARDOE relatives in my tree  to( Worcestershire) can I help at all.

[jc26red]

In the last few days I have corrected an error right at the top of the tree so no major pruning thankfully.  My mistake was taking a transcripted overview of an early memorial deed (Ireland) as being correct.   Up until this point, I had at the top of this line, Francis Creed born around 1680, married 1702 to an Elizabeth.  The deed had Francis Creed, living in the same place with a wife called Sarah Owens daughter of Jeffery Owens.  I thought, this must be the father of my Francis.  Now, having seen an image of the document on Family Search (recent release!) It states quite clearly that Francis Creed bought the land from Jeffery Owens and his wife Sarah Owens!  So scrub Francis and Sarah... and browsed around looking for more deeds for names I recognised and low and behold I found it!  Francis Creed of... eldest son and heir of John Creed senior of....  Within a couple of days I had gone removed a generation and now back on plus  the other siblings.  I had already drawn up a rough tree for John Creed (he lived within a mile of my Francis) as I had guessed there was a connection somewhere, just I didn't know where.  It's all now falling into place.

So the moral is, don't assume a transcription is 100% correct, always try and see the original if possible.  we all make mistakes  but I had transferred someone else's error into my tree because of it!

[nazchk]

Oh I've done this a few times. Traced back what I thought was my  3 x great grandmother, to 17th century France. Only to discover it was the wrong person. Her name was Janet Boa, born in Peebleshire around 1818. Trouble is there are around 5 people with the same name, born in or around that area, with different parents all called Boa. Turns out my Janet died in the poorhouse in 1902. Cant find who her parents were, just that it is written in the poor law records in the mitchell library that she was the illegitimate daughter of Mary. Her daughter was called Marion, and apparently she also had two sons, William and John who I'd never heard of either. Being illegitimate, her real name might not even be Boa. Dont know if that was her mothers name or her fathers. Marion was registered as Boa when she was born, although her marriage cert says her father was John Wilson. Also all of marions children were called Boa at some point in their lives, despite most of them being born out of wedlock, to different men. Very hard to trace people when they give themselves their fathers names later on in life, when you assume they have the same name as the rest of their brothers and sisters. Still might be a French connection tho......

[jbml]

We've all done it.

The question is ... what do you do when you reach something that you can't be sure about? Do you stop researching further back until you can be sure, or do you keep researching the line and hope that you're right?

I keep researching ... because sometimes you find something further back which either confirms or undermines your assumption (like a will two generations further back that names loads of grandchildren but not your ancestor ... ).

What I do when I know that an attribution is uncertain is to mark it as tentative ... and everyone further back is at least single tentative, but may become double tentative or even triple tentative.

Then again, I've had to remove some who weren't tentative at all, but still turned out to be wrong!

I never regret or resent having to do so. Once I'm certain they aren't my ancestors, they don't belong in my tree, so it's over the side they go. But I've usually gained some useful research skills while looking them up, so it's all to the good in the end. 

[hurworth]

Also, don't throw away what you have done - unless they are wildly unrelated then you never know if maybe there is a connection albeit different to the one you thought.

I keep separate trees for each grandparent.  I didn't have a marriage for a distant cousin called Mary Holmes but I hadn't tried very hard either.

Recently I was looking at some other cousins of a different grandparent.  Their son was Fred.  Up popped a marriage to Mary Holmes whose father was a maltster.  It's the same Mary Holmes.   That tied up some loose ends nicely.

[coombs]

Isn't it frustrating though when the wrong family turn out to be more interesting than the right one. 

Yes. The wrong line seems to have been involved with the law, or they travelled a lot, had army service or been local landowners, then you find you made a mistake and the right family were mundane ag labs who never ventured more than 2 miles from their birthplace.

As said we are only human and any genealogist who says they never made a mistake in their research would be exaggerating I think.

[Andrew Tarr]

The question is ... what do you do when you reach something that you can't be sure about? Do you stop researching further back until you can be sure, or do you keep researching the line and hope that you're right?

The answer to that must depend a lot on the rarity of the family surname.  My research has been fairly easy, as my tree has no surname less rare than a Robinson, who was female so lost the name on marriage  .  All the rest were uncommon (see the list below).

Even with an unusual surname, in a small village, and with a strong tradition of recycling forenames, it can still get complicated.  I visited an ancestral churchyard in Suffolk and was surrounded by Edmund tombstones, but none of them the ones I was looking for ....

[andrewalston]

If you've enjoyed researching them you haven't really lost anything Martin... if anything you've now gained the opportunity to research a whole new line.

Also, don't throw away what you have done - unless they are wildly unrelated then you never know if maybe there is a connection albeit different to the one you thought.

In my case I had terrible trouble locating the origin of one of my ggg gfs, James Johnson Donbavand. The only likely James in the 1841 census had been ruled out by everyone else as dying as a teenager. They had an exact date of death, which usually indicates sight of a death certificate or gravestone.
I ended up with a separate database of possible families, covering several variant of the surname, hoping to locate his by a process of elimination.
Eventually I sent off for the death cert, and learned that the teenager was actually my chap's cousin, and the lad seen in 1841 HAD to be mine.

But what to do with all this data?

The Dunbabin One Name Study was born!

[coombs]

I have Cackamole/Cattermole ancestry. Dorcas, daughter of Joseph and Martha born in 1712 in Monk Soham, Suffolk. I believe they connect to the Cackamole family of Dickeburgh/Garboldisham but cannot yet find cast iron evidence. Some trees on Anc seem to have Joseph's parents listed but I cannot find a baptism myself in the said village. You can end up climbing the line of recycled name cousins instead of the direct line, but it can help in the end, as it can be one line of the family that you had researched.