Each week I will post a tip on something I have learned over my years of research.
Like many people, I use Ancestry.com as my root research tool for family history research. All of us have seen the commercials on television where the person types in a name, has dozens of hints in the form of tree leaves pop up and magically traces their roots back five generations and everyone is happy.
"It isn't that simple?" you ask.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work this way. And what isn't said is that those "leaf hints" are many times links to other public family trees not just historical documentation. The problem with that is that you never know to what extent the other trees are accurate. "Leafing" is what I like to call the act of following family trees back by using those little leaf hints without substantiating the familial links with documentation and research.
Chances are you can put a name in and track your ancestry back to someone like King Edward the Elder of the 10th Century just by "leafing". And maybe there is someone who has done incredible research and this in fact true, but how do you know who has and who hasn't done the research? My point is overzealous "leafing" can lead to error upon error upon error in your tree. While you might think you are related to King Edward the Elder and be completely happy with using those hints to get you there, my recommendation is to slow down and document.
"But I followed the trees back and there were 80 matching trees. How can they all be wrong?"
The problem is that the further we go back in our family history, the more possible people can be related to a common ancestor. And that means more people who have seen the magical commercial and have done "leafing" of their own. The problems can extrapolate until you literally have hundreds of matching trees saying you are related to King Edward the Elder, but not one tree with any proof.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I was once a "leafer" too. When I first started on Ancestry.com I connected my family back almost 2000 years by matching leaf hints with other trees. Then I went back and started trying to document the 2000 years and was left with literally hundreds of people in my tree that I had to delete in order to get back to the point that every relationship was documented. It would have saved me hours of research time if I had documented each connection to start with.
My recommendation to you is, while you might consider "leafing" to get yourself going, you will be glad you didn't in the long run. Sometimes when I suspect a connection, I will look at those little leaf hints connecting me to other public trees and see just how far back the tree can possibly go...then I prove it.
~Christine
Like many people, I use Ancestry.com as my root research tool for family history research. All of us have seen the commercials on television where the person types in a name, has dozens of hints in the form of tree leaves pop up and magically traces their roots back five generations and everyone is happy.
"It isn't that simple?" you ask.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work this way. And what isn't said is that those "leaf hints" are many times links to other public family trees not just historical documentation. The problem with that is that you never know to what extent the other trees are accurate. "Leafing" is what I like to call the act of following family trees back by using those little leaf hints without substantiating the familial links with documentation and research.
Chances are you can put a name in and track your ancestry back to someone like King Edward the Elder of the 10th Century just by "leafing". And maybe there is someone who has done incredible research and this in fact true, but how do you know who has and who hasn't done the research? My point is overzealous "leafing" can lead to error upon error upon error in your tree. While you might think you are related to King Edward the Elder and be completely happy with using those hints to get you there, my recommendation is to slow down and document.
"But I followed the trees back and there were 80 matching trees. How can they all be wrong?"
The problem is that the further we go back in our family history, the more possible people can be related to a common ancestor. And that means more people who have seen the magical commercial and have done "leafing" of their own. The problems can extrapolate until you literally have hundreds of matching trees saying you are related to King Edward the Elder, but not one tree with any proof.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I was once a "leafer" too. When I first started on Ancestry.com I connected my family back almost 2000 years by matching leaf hints with other trees. Then I went back and started trying to document the 2000 years and was left with literally hundreds of people in my tree that I had to delete in order to get back to the point that every relationship was documented. It would have saved me hours of research time if I had documented each connection to start with.
My recommendation to you is, while you might consider "leafing" to get yourself going, you will be glad you didn't in the long run. Sometimes when I suspect a connection, I will look at those little leaf hints connecting me to other public trees and see just how far back the tree can possibly go...then I prove it.
~Christine
