The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Documentation better than faith in genealogy
This story was published May 24, 1998
When we travel to most foreign countries, government agents at the border examine our passports and visas. Are we who we say we are?
Genealogists are the agents who check the papers of family members, documenting who they are and their place in our family.
Frankly, immigration agents have the easier job. They work with living people who can answer questions and provide documents. Genealogists must document the dead.
Some of their subjects have been dead for hundreds of years. In a few instances, their ancestors have been dead for 1,000 years or more, but that's rare. Few records date that far back.
Of course that doesn't stop many from making claims, but that's where the genealogists come by their duty to demand credible documents.
Evaluating documents is tricky business. Sometimes it requires a bit of backbone on the part of genealogists who must question the work of others, often a beloved aunt or uncle.
Many accept on faith whatever connections family genealogists have made. Faith has little place in genealogy. Documentation is the stan dard - birth certificates, marriage records, death certificates, obituaries, wills, deeds, passports and census records. These and many other documents are the foundation of genealogical research.
Recently, someone told me they were confident of a family tree they'd unearthed because it connected to royalty.
Coward that I am, I bit my tongue. Some of the most grotesque miscarriages of genealogy involve "royal" lines. When you stop and think about it, there's more cause to suspect and check out connections to royalty than probably any other type of connection.
Who wouldn't relish princesses and kings in their family tree?
More than have legitimate title, I guarantee.
And the problem isn't just the connection to a royal line but the sad truth that royalty itself in ancient times was guilty of manufacturing fanciful roots and branches.
They had far more than a little prestige at risk. Sometimes making the right connections influenced future and fortune.
A thousand years or so ago, it was quite a royal fad to "trace" genealogies to Jesus, and therefore to Adam and Eve. Of course that's all poppycock, but that doesn't stand in the way of the gullible who are filled with faith.
I'm sorry to say that much of the genealogy in the Family History Library computers in Salt Lake City contain little, if any, documentation of links. This is no slam, the folks who run the place will tell you the same and caution that we need to check out the documentation. Don't just accept it on faith.
Branch libraries - called Family History Centers - scattered throughout the world are staffed by volunteers who will gladly help you learn about proper documentation.
It involves writing on your forms - whatever you use to keep genealogical records - the source of your information. "Aunt Tillie" doesn't cut it, in most cases. Of course you want to credit Aunt Tillie in your notes if she's given you family group sheets or pedigree charts containing research she has done. But that's "credit," not documentation.
Good genealogy forms and computer programs for genealogy have a place to list your sources. This is where you note that an age and place of birth comes from the 1890 federal census for Asotin County, or that a death date comes from an obituary published in the Jan. 15, 1955 issue of the Tri-City Herald.
If you are fortunate, you will find this information on forms filled out by other genealogists. Hopefully, when future genealogists come across your records, they will find that you have abundantly documented your entries.
The proof of genealogical pudding is in the documentation.