Fundamental Principle of Genealogy

I'm not a professional or expert genealogist. After hundreds of hours of amateur research, I have formed a few opinions about genealogy. Here is one important observation, that nobody seems to talk about. If I may be so bold, I would like to call it a fundamental principle.

No facts in genealogy are certain. When several facts support each other, they gain more credibility than they have separately.

You might simply think that facts are facts. Either John and Joe are brothers, or they're not. But mistakes are always possible. There are even some soap opera examples in which people are mistaken about who their own parents are, or who their children are. Nothing is certain, although some facts have more credibility than others.

I've seen many mistakes in Census records, military records, obituaries and family Bibles. People's memories are not always reliable. There are even mistakes on tombstones. "Carved in stone" doesn't quite mean what it used to!

This principle is obscured by popular genealogy, such as the television show "Who Do You Think You Are?" Someone finds out that their great grandfather was a sheriff. Not "probably a sheriff" or "this sheriff was probably your great grandfather." I suppose every genealogist has some threshold of probability above which they regard facts as certain enough.

When facts support each other, they gain credibility, especially if they come from different sources. If the 1860 US Census has John M. Smith, age 37, in Chicago, and the 1870 US Census has John H. Smith, age 45, in Detroit, it doesn't seem credible that they are the same person. However, if both John Smiths have wives named Emma, and children Frank, Anna, Joseph and Caroline, and the ages match up approximately, it becomes more credible that there really was a John Smith, who moved his family from Chicago to Detroit between 1860 and 1870.

Facts about facts are often the most difficult to verify. It's not always clear whether two records refer to the same John Smith.

Careful genealogists, like the Latter Day Saints or the Daughters of the American Revolution, have pretty high standards for their facts. They won't include facts without pretty good evidence. Still, nothing is really certain.

I tend to take a more top-down approach. I will record facts with low credibility (in my database, not on my website), and regard them as rumors, that need to be checked out. I don't usually put anything on my webpages unless it is reasonably credible. When I do include facts of dubious quality on my webpages, I try to indicate that I have some doubts, and give whatever evidence I have. Just as no facts are entirely certain, none are entirely worthless, either.

Comments are welcome! haloupek at gmail dot com