Nancy Drew and the Burden of Proof

Can you imagine if Nancy Drew made an accusation against the bad guy without having any sort of proof?  Her case against them would not hold up in court, much to the embarrassment of her father who just happens to be an attorney.  I'm pretty certain her father would want to see the paper trail!

And so it is with genealogy.  It is easy to claim someone as an ancestor without having the proof.  There are many family trees available on the internet, but not many have the documents to back it up.  We need to see the paper trail!  Ancestry.com is a great place to get started on your family tree [I am in no way compensated for promoting Ancestry.com (though if they're reading this... :)  ).  I find their subscription service to be very helpful in locating documents pertaining to my ancestors].  But, caveat emptor!  It is easy to get excited and carried away in searching for ancestors, especially when you have found a gem of an ancestor, and click on every other person's own family tree to add their information to yours without verifying the facts.  I have done this with my own tree (though I am going back to find the paper trail for each person)!  If I had taken my time with each person to find my proof, instead of letting the excitement of the moment get to me, I would be saving myself a lot of time now. 

What do genealogists use as proof?  Census documents are always the first to come to mind.  Other documents would be military records (I found many WWI draft cards for my family tree), immigration records, ship manifests, newspaper articles, wills, local histories, land records, church records, and cemetery records, just to name a few.  Another helpful tip to get started is simply a Google search.  Type in the name of an ancestor with perhaps a birth or death date, maybe with a spouse's name, or with a location.  By a Google search, I was able to find a document mentioning my great-great grandmother's first spouse (who was the person I was actually looking for), which then led me to a marriage license document and his obituary. 

I think it is alright to add information to an ancestor's file that you believe pertains to them.  But make sure you put a note there saying that you believe this is true but that you don't have the evidence for it yet.  If another family tree lists an ancestor's parents, but you do not have any evidence that they are indeed the real parents, I would pencil in the names on your family tree, but do not begin to research them until you know for sure that they are the parents.  Why spend the time researching a line you are not sure is the correct one?  Above all, don't believe everything you read on the internet or see in another family tree about your ancestor.  Find that piece of proof.  Build that case for your ancestor that Nancy Drew's father would want to work with.