Make Sure Your Genealogy Facts Are Correct

I don't think that I give any single piece of advice more often than this one. When a client brings their tree to me, and asks for help, I invariably spend an inordinate amount of time untangling the false portions of their tree from the real portion. There is a lot of incorrect research out there, and much of it is repeated in multiple trees. There are times that I have seen the same mistake repeated in over a dozen different trees. In these cases, what has likely happened is that one person made an error in their research, and published a tree with that error. Then another person copied that error into their tree. Pretty soon, the error is propagated across several trees. From there, even more cautious researchers feel comfortable that the information is correct, since they see the same information any many trees.

A good rule of thumb, when dealing with these publicly available trees is that if they don't include documentation for facts, and if you can't follow the sources and come to the same conclusion, don't use the information.