#229449
Postby Charlottesquare » June 14th, 2019, 11:51 am
I have two versions re my father's family on the male line.
Version one was created by my uncle who started the work in the 1960s, this is a handwritten collection of sheets with boxes/ a grid which takes a little getting used to but works as a quick reference, the catch is he did not detail his sources (he pored through parish records) so I have had to treat everything with a little caution. However he did hoard everything he could, so I inherited five ring binders full of data, photos, army records, newspaper clippings etc which does help to flesh out from a bald list of names and dates.
The second is Family Tree Maker- gradually, as I check each of my uncle's entries I post them in, nothing goes in until I am certain it is correct, hastening slowly, from experience, is essential to avoid errors. The idea is to input everything my Uncle had, photos, news articles etc and then distribute copies to sisters and cousins, but it has been a slow process with flurries of activity followed by months when little gets done.
As a warning to others, to avoid some of my errors, from experience trees found online need to be treated with real caution, a lot of them I have found have errors, a lot of the errors are common to lots of different trees as the errors get copied from Tree A to Tree B etc found online and get cemented into place- blindly relying on the research of others I have found is the easiest way to introduce errors.
I am fortunate that there is now a One Name Study re this surname which has a really well researched history with circa 9,000 names in it, notwithstanding that caution is needed as for at least one ancestor we cannot be definite which of two individuals ,with the same christian name born in the same year within the parish records, is the one to follow backwards, we have had to work on balance of probability (occupation) rather than certainty- on the plus side, researching independently, we both match back to circa 1720, it is a birth in 1677 that is causing the issue, so decent progress has been made and I just need to accept there is the possibility of being from one of two different lines before that. (On the plus side we think we likely all originally descend from four brothers circa 1600)
So now, apart from data input, I think this tree is mainly as complete as I am going to make it.
The other issue can be family misconceptions /misunderstandings blinding research. I have one individual on my mother's side, my great great grandfather, born in 1796. My grandfather (who I never met, he died before I was born) had written in some notes I inherited that the individual "returned to Achnacarry where he died"- He was a Cameron. For twenty years this had me chasing the Achnacarry/Fort William records for his birth to no avail until finally I found his birth north of Perth, miles away. He had been a travelling shepherd and the "return to Achnacarry" was not a return to where he was from (my assumption) it was a return to where he habitually had gone to work each season- it is so easy to get misled and follow the wrong interpretation once back into the parish record periods.
Re this latter tree, where I did not inherit as much data so started more from scratch, I have found that completing an A4 sheet for each individual detailing both the information found and its source is really helpful with the record keeping, once happy to enter the data into software the identifying tree entry number can be added to the sheet and if each sheet is held in a clear wallet it is a useful way of also storing other paperwork/ photos/ certificates re the individual to complement the electronic record. (though still not fully sorted the correct way to file family group photos by this system)