Reputable research will make your genealogy that much more credible

How would we react if a breathless person raced into a building and announced that he’d just seen a tigress trotting down the street? Most of us would be skeptical, and a few would wonder if the person were nuts. One or two might peek out the front door.

What would happen, though, if a police officer came in and warned us that no one should leave the building because an escaped wild animal was loose outside? Some people would be scared, but few would question the truth of what they’d heard.

A police officer issuing a warning is simply considered more reliable than a stranger shouting about tigers.

Remember the saying, “consider the source”? That advice is crucial to anyone trying to compile a reliable genealogy. You won’t meet any tigers in your research, but you may encounter a few red herrings, or find yourself chasing a wild goose.

Whenever a person states something as fact, others may be curious as to how that person can be so sure. In everyday conversation we don’t interrupt ourselves to say, like a doorstep preacher, “John 20, verses 24 to 29,” but that doesn’t mean citation isn’t important. People will more easily accept your published family history if they can see that you gathered your information from reputable sources.

Ensure as much as possible that your documentation derives from independent origins. It’s necessary to distinguish between primary and secondary sources. The former includes eyewitness accounts of an event—a record created by a participant or an informed party at or about the time the event occurred. The affidavit of a parent or attendant at a birth may be accepted as proof of age or date of birth of a child, for instance.

A secondary source is created when someone reads or hears about an event after the fact. If you and I and five other people read a newspaper article written by a correspondent on the spot, our information becomes secondary once we pass it on because we heard the news second-hand. One great thing about secondary sources is that they often lead us to primary sources.

A footnote in a book, a bibliography, a website—these ought to lead you immediately or eventually to one or more primary sources. If you travel the reference road and never reach that destination, the information might be unreliable or incorrect.

Attribution problems often crop up when it comes to family lore. Most families have a few yarns, with some degree of accuracy, that have been passed down for generations.

These can be amusing as dinner table conversation, but an obligation arises when you decide to publish them. Doing so is fine, provided the reader is given a heads up with wording like, “Granddad MacKinnon used to tell this story about his grandfather MacFarlane to show how strong the man was.” OK, now we all know it’s a tale that may or may not be factually correct.

The same principle applies to opinions. In doing a genealogy you sometimes come up against a dilemma: two equally good references may have produced the name John Murphy, but you have to figure out which is the right one for your genealogy.

In these cases, I advise people to present the information they’ve collected on each. Then they can either admit to being stuck, or choose one and preface their opinion by saying something like, “In my opinion the John Murphy who landed at Shediac in 1842 is more likely than the man of that name living in Sussex in 1851, because . . . (present your reasoning).”

Research in genealogy means finding and copying the details is just one step in a long process. It’s prudent, whenever you collect information, to note the source: a book, a website, a headstone, correspondence and so forth. Let readers have the information either with specific notations or in a list of sources accompanying the finished product. After all, you do want to be believable, don’t you?

Dr. Terrence M. Punch is a member of the Order of Canada. Find information about his most recent book, Montbéliard Immigration to Nova Scotia, 1749-1752 (Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore) online at genealogical.com.