We all goof. Sometimes it's a beginner's mistake, sometimes it's a typo, and sometimes the record is wrong.
Today's topic ~ mistakes I've made or run across in my research, so others can learn from them ;-)
One in my occasional posts on genealogical methods ~ for those starting out and as reminders to those of us who've already spent way too much time, energy, and money trying to track down elusive ancestors.....
Most new genealogists learn fairly quickly to write down sources for everything ('cuz, no, you won't remember which book you got that one piece of information when it becomes your focus again in 3.7 years after you find an amazing new piece of information) and to not trust on-line family trees.
But ~ what are some other pitfalls to avoid? I've got lots of examples of things that can go wrong with one's genealogical endeavors :-(
Records aren't always accurate
See the man on the right?
He looks all nice and respectable, doesn't he?
And he was (previous diary about this family here).
Yet, he stunk ~ absolutely stunk! ~ at names.
On his marriage record, he listed his mother as Helen Norrie (actual name ~ Helen Cassidy; working hypothesis ~ she's recorded in some places as Eleanor, so she may have been called Norrie).
On his adopted father's death record, he lists his grandfather as Thomas, when the man's actual first name was Robert. (working hypothesis ~ Robert died long before Peter was born ~ but Peter would have had childhood memories of Rev. Thomas Hislop, his grandmother's brother and a prominent Free Church minister.....).
One of my favorite stories..... spent quite a while looking for a woman who was listed on her marriage record with the maiden name Small. Looked and looked and looked ~ for women born to the prominent family with that name in that town, and for young widows who had married into the family. No matching women, so I finally put it aside as a brick wall and move on to another line.
A couple years later, I'm looking at a probate record for another family I'm working on, and I see the above woman listed by her married name. Turns out she was from a couple towns away from where her marriage was recorded ~ and that her maiden name was Little, not Small. Absent minded minister?
Don't make assumptions about what record is telling you.
Abigail Buffum married Samuel Derby in Salem MA in 1808. So common sense seemed to be telling me that the record in the Salem vital records in the births section dated 6 March 1803 for an Abigail Buffum couldn't be her, despite the parents names probably being right (Joshua and Mary). Especially true, since looking at the census showed she was likely born in the early 1790s in Connecticut (and there's a record for her birth in Middletown CT in 1792).
So I looked a little further..... First, the Salem record is a baptism, not a birth record. While most babies in that time and place were baptized as young infants, there were occasional exceptions. A further look at the records showed that there was a Samuel Buffum with the same parents baptized the same day in Salem. Hhhmmmm....
Then, I followed up on the 1850 census record, which showed Abigail's mother living in the same household as Abigail and a couple of Abigail's children ~ her mother as Mary Lane. So.... back to the vital records. Mary Buffum married Nicholas Lane on 7 March 1802 in Salem MA ~ one year before the two Buffum children were baptized. But... wait.... there's also a Nicholas Lane baptized on 6 March 1803 (same day as Abigail and Samuel Buffum), son of Nicholas and Mary Lane.
So, my working hypothesis is that the Mary's two children from her first marriage weren't baptized for some reason (possibly lingering Quaker ties in the Buffum family, although she was from a Congregational family). After her first husband died in Connecticut, she moves to Salem (where her husband's extended family was) and marries Nicholas Lane. When Mary and Nicholas have their new son baptized, they make it a group effort and have the two children from Mary's first marriage done as well.
Another example. This looks like such a nice, simple census entry, doesn't it? An older woman, living with her son and grandson. Oh so tempting to add Walter to the database as William's son (oops.... that's what I did as a new researcher......). But.....
Further research show that Walter was William's nephew, son of William's brother John Page Weston. More details on this family in my earlier diary about a printed memorial with lots of errors here; in fact, it was when I was writing that previous diary that I realized that I had the same Walter in my database twice ~ once where he belonged and once with the wrong father, from back when I was a new researcher and made that mistake.
Side note: I'm stuck on much of my research... New England records wrung out, and needing to go to Ireland, or possibly back to Scotland, for my father's side of the family, so this summer's task has been cleaning up my database and filling in gaps. Turning out to be a worthwhile endeavor ~ artifacts from a database transfer to my current program more than a decade ago that weren't caught at the time, sibling details not entered, incomplete or misspelled place names (argh! to typos!).... all sorts of things to clean up.
Outliers ~ they exist ;-)
In colonial New England, the average age for marriage for women was in her early 20s (such lovely demographic tables in David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed), with most women marrying between 19 and 22. (The nice tables later in the same book show that women in Virginia in the same era married when they were 16 to 19 years old. So place as well as time matters for knowing what is normal/usual.)
But, occasionally, a woman married a bit younger. In most of the cases I've found where a woman in colonial Massachusetts did marry younger than 19, she was an orphan (including a couple cases where just the father died, and the family was living far from other relatives or the mother had remarried ~ see Abigail Buffum above....) or a baby was born about 6.5 months after the wedding ;-)
While many people died young, Elizabeth Merriam (picture here), who married Jesse Putnam, died at age 102 years, 10 months, and 6 days.
However, if you have outliers ~ a 14 year old getting married, a 48 year old mother, a woman who dies at 102..... it's worth double checking that the bride wasn't an older cousin with the same name, that it's the mother and not the grandmother raising the child, that someone didn't exaggerate his/her age for the census (or have a grandchild who thought everyone over 57 was ancient as the informant....).
What mistakes have you made that caused you trouble before you figured out what had really happened? Or what other amusing mistakes (well, it was once I found her...) have you found in records like the absent-minded minister who didn't remember that Small and Little are two different names?
Upcoming schedule. Volunteers for future diaries?
Aug 15 - Fenway49
Aug 22 - Susan from 29
Aug 29 - Jim H
Sep 5 - mayim
Sep 12 - open for adoption
Sep 19 - open for adoption
Sep 26 - open for adoption
Oct 3 - open for adoption
(Experimenting with putting this here so it is more prominent ~ plus, it can be edited as people volunteer....)