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.
In genealogy, 'too good to be true' may be
This story was published Feb. 20, 2000
Millions of genealogists are finding the Internet and other computer technologies a boon beyond the most fantastic imaginations just a few short years ago.
When I first started in genealogy, we thought it was marvelous that we could take family group sheets and pedigree charts to a copy machine and almost effortlessly copy someone else's work.
Often this didn't save us the tedious task of copying the information onto our own forms by hand or typewriter, but it was wonderful that we didn't need to spend hours copying the information in the first place.
Then along came computers and software programs that allow us to copy thousands of records in mere minutes. Whether we obtain this information via floppy disks conveniently mailed or from the Internet via a modem, only a few keystrokes are required to copy all this data into our own files and link it to our family. This means when I find a distant cousin who has a lot of information on a branch of the family, I can almost effortlessly add it to my own.
Ah, but there is a rub. This has become so easy that many genealogists are blithely accepting the work of other genealogists as valid. Much of the genealogical information that we download from the Internet comes without "sources," which is to say we have no way to evaluate the accuracy of the data. Some might call corroborating the accuracy of genealogy that we adopt as our own "looking a gift horse in the mouth." That well may be, in which case it is our responsibility to look gift horses in the mouth.
It's also our responsibility to record in our data where we obtained information. Most genealogical software programs for computers these days have protocols for recording this information.
We need to be as complete as possible, identifying what information is in the source. For instance, if we just include a note saying that we obtained information from the 1890 U.S. Census for Wallowa County, Ore., no one else knows what information actually came from the census. Is it the relationship between children and parents? Is it age? Place of birth?
Citing this information enables any future genealogist to quickly evaluate the decisions we have made based on various documents. Were our judgments sound? Are the people who we say they are? Were their relationships what our records say they are?
The technology is challenging us in many ways. How much genealogy can one person evaluate? I have more than 21,000 records (individuals) in my main genealogy database, plus several more databases. All of these people - the 21,000 - are believed to have the good fortune to be related to me. But it is obvious to anyone who has done very much genealogy that I have accepted many of these relationships on faith that the work of others has been correct.
Unfortunately, that is a naive faith. Some genealogists are outrageously careless. Some are downright dishonest. But mistakes are made by even the most careful genealogists. And there are honest disagreements about what constitutes adequate documentation to declare a relationship, as well as differences of opinion about how to interpret some information.
When I hear someone declare that their genealogy "is done," I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Genealogy is never done. We may be done with it, but the job is eternal. No genealogy of any substance is ever finished. Genealogy is a work in progress.
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The next meeting of the Tri-City Genealogical Society will be at 7 p.m. March 8. The society will meet at the Richland Regional Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1314 Goethals Road, Richland. Bring three family names.