by Joelle Steele

I spend a lot of time online researching ancestry lineage for my clients. There are literally hundreds of websites that individuals have created that include their family trees. In addition, there are hundreds of genealogical websites for individual countries, nationalities, ethnicities, and religions, such as jewishgen.org, afrigeneas.com, italiangenealogy.com, etc. And, there are at least as many general genealogy websites like ancestry.com, familysearch.com, myheritage.com, genealogybank.com, findmypast.com, geneanet.org, geni.com, wikitree.com … the list of genealogical resources is seemingly endless.

But, all of these websites have one thing in common: No one supervises their data, it comes from a wide variety of sources, and as a result, it is often riddled with errors. Some small, some large. It’s up to the person searching these genealogy databases to catch those errors and not pass them on in their own family tree.

I’ve been researching lineage online since these kinds of websites first appeared in the early 1990s. I actually know what I’m doing when I research, but these errors drive me crazy! So I can only imagine what it’s like for someone who just wants to trace their own family tree and assumes they can get all their ancestors neatly organized from one website. Yeah, I wish …

Here are a few things that can help you better navigate your ancestry if you decide to trace your own lineage online.

First, be sure to start with your own birth certificate, those of your parents, and those of your grandparents. Without these documents, you are open to following a lineage that is not your own.

Second, remember that your grandfather, “John Miller,” is not the only John Miller ever born, or born on the same day as your John Miller. I have found names online that are far more unusual than John Miller who were born on the same day and were not the same person.

Third, never rely solely on one website for your information. I reference a minimum of 80 websites a year, often up to six different ones for every family lineage I trace. There is no one website that is 100% accurate, and you will find differences on almost every website you visit.

Fourth, when you search passenger lists, census records, or any handwritten records, remember that these records were kept by people, some of whom did not always know how to spell a name, or wrote a date incorrectly, or left out a family member, or didn’t fully understand a non-English-speaking person, etc.

Fifth, and last, always look at the dates when children were born and the ages of their parents. It is amazing how many records attribute a parent to all the children when one parent is a step-parent to some of them. Some of the kids may be his/hers, and others may not.

Ancestry tracing is not for the faint of heart. Study everything very carefully so that you link your ancestry to the right family, your family.