Where's the proof?

I absolutely love online genealogy. When I started genealogy in high school, in the mid 1970s, there was no "online". Computers were being used to make indexes, and that really helped, but the research had to be done with actual books and microfilms. Now, with records being scanned and processed with optical character recognition, genealogical records are being made available at an incredible pace. And people are sharing more than ever. The popularity of genealogy has increased steadily over the years, in large part due to the ease of going online to access records. But something really bothers me.

What bothers me is that there is a lot of incorrect information online. While the copies of original records are tremendous, the data shared by genealogists must be taken with a grain of salt. When I see information in personal family trees that is shared over and over again it is tempting to assume that it is correct, because it is so prevalent. But unfortunately, a lie told over and over again is still a lie. Of course, that is way too harsh. Most people have no interest in spreading something that is not true. But they are interested in extending their lines, and hopefully to some interesting ancestor, or even to just break through and continue their research. And sometimes information is posted, not as fact, but as theory, to encourage discussion and collaboration.

I've said that the online records are extremely valuable. But it is important to remember that they are never complete. Even if all the known records for a locality and time are online, it is possible that a birth didn't get recorded, that a page was missed, or records lost. It is too easy to adopt somebody as an ancestor just because they have the right age or name and nobody else can be found. Although that might be a good guess, it isn't proof. That new found ancestor extends the line, perhaps into some well-known line, maybe getting you back to that immigrant. But is it right?

Certainly, that person should be researched. Most people will look at the possibilities. Is the person the right age? Did he/she live in the right place? Could he/she have been the father/mother of the last known ancestor? Often, the answer is "yes". Is there evidence, or is it just the best guess available? Sometimes there isn't much evidence available. Sometimes it's circumstantial. We have to make assumptions. This is where we get into trouble. We need to go a little farther.

What we need to do is to attempt to prove that the proposed ancestor cannot be ours. If we eliminate him, we are closer to the truth. Below is an example from Ancestry.com. I have an ancestor, William Scofield, who was born in Connecticut ca. 1801 and lived in Cass County, Michigan. His adult life is reasonably well documented. But there were more than one William Scofields from Connecticut of his age, so its not a simple job to trace him back to his parents, even though Connecticut records are very good.

If we search the public trees of Ancestry.com for William Scofield, b ca 1801, Connecticut, d. ca. 1863 Cass County, Michigan, we find perhaps thirty or more trees suggesting that this William's parents were Daniel Hoyt Scofield and Abigail Trowbridge and show "William" as "William T." Clearly, the records show that William T. Scofield was the son of Daniel and Abigail, but was he the same as William of Cass County, Michigan? It is easy to blindly accept that as fact, and obviously many have done so.

When doing my search, one tree caught my eye, one tree with different parents listed. This tree, published by Ancestry user "evongohren", includes articles about William Scofield which prove that he cannot be the same person as William T. Scofield. He proves this is not possible by simply reviewing marriage and census records that show William T. stayed in Connecticut while William was in Oswego County, New York and Cass County, Michigan. Evongohren's  research paralleled mine in proving that William was not William T. But he has gone further and proposed other parents for William and has provided his reasoning for that, based on genealogical standards of evidence.

It is better for our research to end at a roadblock, than to accept an incorrect ancestral line. Perhaps we need a way to consider possible ancestors and make it clear that they are not proven.