Question of the day: What mistakes did I overlook? For more genealogy mistakes to avoid, check out this oldie but goodie. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h5NxltCop5-pZpc.html

I'd personally add 'don't ignore middle names if they have one and you know it' to this list. Sometimes records will switch the order and a family member's middle name will be used as their first instead.

Here’s a helpful tip that no one seems to mention: if you’re having trouble finding the parents or children of a deceased relative, look for their obituary, most funeral homes will post these online and they will include the deceased predecessed relatives (parents, children, siblings). They will also usually include the “survived by” members of the family from spouses to grand children

When I started out researching my ancestry I have jumped to conclusions on who's who. I suggest to make sure confirmation before entering the information into your main tree. My best tip is to read obituaries because they have some vital information that is useable.

And the maiden name issue drives me crazy too!! Big pet peeve of mine 🤦🏼‍♀️

A couple of related items. Entering birth and death dates that are impossible. Like a birth date that is 150 years before the death date or a mother giving birth at 60 years old. You likely have two different people. Not recognizing that it was common to reuse a name for a child when the first child died as an infant. Do not use the birth date for the first child with the death date for the second.

I've been doing my tree for years now, and made some of these mistakes! I remember when I first started as a teen, and if I found an already existing tree with a couple of people that looked like the same people I was looking at, then I would go and add all of their ancestors to my tree. Very cringe. I ended up deleting my tree and starting from scratch about 10 years ago. I'm a lot more careful these days. I often need more than three records, or else I need a very obscure reason (as in an uncommon name within a uncommon occupation, location, etc). One of the people in my tree was added based upon a certain house name and the handwriting of the person in two marriage certificates, and the fact that he was listed as widowed in the second. It was a very low population area in the UK, but even this is still not enough for me fully, because the person in question had an extremely common name to the area he lived. One thing that does annoy me a little, but I don't know if it is a mistake, or what; people with trees that have thousands of people. I did the ancestry dna test, and some of my matches have over 30,000 people in their tree. I've noticed that in some of these trees, there are many unlinked people, or several separate trees in the same gedcom. If I'm trying to find a link between a DNA match and me though, one of the first things I check is common surnames and common birthplaces in our trees, but if they have 30,000 people in their tree, then they often always match at least one surname and birthplace, but more often than not it doesn't check out. I have been doing my tree on and off for about 18 years, and I'm currently at about 370 people, and that includes ancestor siblings, and their descendants wherever possible. I think if all of my lines were British, I would be at about 500. One of my grandparents was mainland European, and it's a little trickier because the records have been lost, or not yet indexed online. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks, because it's good to see that I've already ironed out all of these mistakes!

One problem I have recently discovered is my direct line ancestor and his brother both immigrated over from Scotland together and settled in the same area together and both had huge families (and of course, both married Mary's!!). As I have been trying to research this family I notice their children have similar names and depending on who's tree I'm looking at (while doing research), a kid could be claimed by one or other of these men. It's been exciting but drives me crazy at the same time! Especially when both lines will have a child with the EXACT same name! It's been challenging trying to find enough supporting material to separate these children to their fathers.

Excellent recommendation about the usage of maiden names. I stopped completing the female married name in the surname field to prevent my databases searching for hints from other trees that were incorrect. I found by leaving the surname (maiden) name blank, I didn't get as many hints that were errors and in some cases led me down a different path that I could then verify with parish records. I wish I had known this years ago!

I am so glad you included that variations of spelling bit. People spell many names in my tree different, like how Foulis is used as Fouls, Fowles, Fowlis, Foules, Foelis, Etc.

Love the spelling comment! My surname has so many variations it has become my joke. What is frustrating is when you find other who are related to the same people but insist “their” spelling I’d the only one, when there are example of multiple spellings for he same individual! Love your videos...I wishe all of this had been available when I started in genealogy nearly 30 years ago!

I love this video. Hmm mistakes I've made the Unk yet I'll stop that now. It was an indicator that Oi get back to this. Thanks for a great video.

I must admit that in ten plus years I have been working on my tree I have made most of these mistakes. Now I know what I need to do to clean up a few records and to delete my original tree that I no longer update. Thanks for the information.

All of that is excellent advice for managing personally created/maintained trees; however, not all of it might be applicable to public crowdsourced trees. For instance, on the Geni website (which started independently but was later acquired by MyHeritage), unknown surnames are (supposed to be) designated “NN” (which I resisted for several years before finally acquiescing ).

In the time between a family progenitor landing, in the Cape of Good Hope, and the 20thC, many family's were fairly illiterate or barely literate. It followed that records were, often, written by someone else, who recorded names as they heard them. My Mother was a de Bruin. This name is recorded as given, de Bruyn, de Bruijn and even the precursor "du". First names were recorded in a multitude of formats and even swapped around or portions dropped or added. Makes for fun. Patrick.

I had searched for years (off and on) for the maiden name of my G-G-G-Grandmother. I finally found it on the death certificate of a sibling of my G-G-Grandmother. So, make sure you check out the records of your ancestor's siblings!

The most frustrating for me is when initials and complete names are interchanged. Census entries often unreliable in my experience for this reason, not to mention those spelling errors. Funny though, the penmanship is usually beautifully written in cursive!

Thanks, brilliant video and advice. Way back in my tree there is an O'Halloran but when they came to England the O was left off ☺️

Love these videos! It’s helped me so much! Are you also on WikiTree and Family Search?

The most regular blunder I recognise is the misuse of Family Tree Maker auto-fill of places. For instance, type in Cardiff, with intention of getting Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales and accidentally click on Cardiff, Garfield, Colorado, USA.. So many times one sees these errors in family trees and it is difficult to get it corrected. And it then often gets added to other family trees by people who copy without checking... Have clicked incorrectly myself and have seen copies of my incorrect family tree in many places around the world.. (Although FMP does not seem to recognise Cardiff, Glamorgan(shire), Wales....)....

Some very good points. After researching for many decades I have encountered many of these and a few others: 1) I also like to look at sibling's children as well. Was trying to determine which of several brothers was the father of an ancestor Elizabeth Shelton. Many had connected to father James but I was doubtful as early histories did not mention her as his child. However another brother John was married to a Parthena...and wouldn't you know it, one of Elizabeth's grandchildren (by a sibling to my ancestor) was named Parthena. Further research indicated John and Parthena Shelton were likely Elizabeth's parents. 2) don't trust all family lore that you have been told. I am conclusively related to a famous person in western history. I cant tell you how many times I have been contacted by folks whose family "stories" say they are related to that same famous person and it turns out to be completely false; 3) sometimes folks just change the way they spell their names. Am related to a Dolton family and without any rhyme or reason many line changed the spelling to Dalton...in this case I think they just tired of correcting folks; 4) dont trust old research. Have an ancestor that many early researchers listed as dying in 1897...except I found him on the 1900 census! When I pointed this out to one researcher they responded "well a census can be wrong". Sure a census might get the spelling or age or place of birth wrong but it is not going to list someone who died 3 years prior! 5) look for things that don't make sense. Ancestor Michael Jones was listed as having been born in 1699...however many of his children were born in the 1760s and when he died in 1780 his will listed minor children...not likely if he was 80 years old. In reality he was probably born in ca 1730.

Unk is a real surname! Thousands of people in the Netherlands have that surname. It can be confusing though, sometimes, when you can’t tell if Unk means Unknown or a real surname.

I follow some channels like this kinda casually, a few days ago another channel asked 'how far I could go back' Me personally? To my grandparents lol (honestly, I had to ask my mom my grandfather's name; I never knew the guy as my grandparents divorced when my mom was a teen and they didn't have much contact) - who are born in the 1930's and 1940's (I am 20) but I remembered two things a) someone on my mother's side did some family tree research (not the same person as point b, my mother's aunt did) b) I remember my mom telling her last name has some history. That is, People with her last name were dressmakers at the court of Charles V (holy roman emperor, ya know, the guy that controlled half of europe in the early 16th century) so well...AT LEAST 16th century. If I can connect the 'my mother's name' family trees I find on the internet to us. Her name has a coat of arms though, so it would be fun to get a clear link to the court of charles the fifth. Point of the comment: I definitely focus* on my mother's side, and all branches of my mothers side. It's simply more exciting - I can combine it with the work my mother's aunt did who I think mainly went back the female-female-female way (to early 19th century so far) based on what the family tree looks like so far, and on my mother's father's side I can get to a royal court. My and my father's last name means 'from the fields' and has no research done whatsoever, but based on the meaning of the name it also sounds rather unexciting. (Focus when I have money that is, as I have to subscribe to myheritage now to do anything else and I am a 20yo middle class student so nope.)

In your video called Newbies for family Search you had a green marker you used. What app or tool was that. I sure liked it.

How do you delete trees. Or make one consistent family tree. On my heritage they only show 10 people at a time. I kept thinking people had been deleted. Do I have to start from scratch and readd people. When I add people from someone else’s tree does that duplicate my person or just mirror my person?

thanks for this video, it has made my genealogy trail a bit easier. I too had a relative who married someone with the same family name, I left it blank because I thought it was entered in error, turns out they were both called Brown.

I had to laugh when you said come back to your Polish ancestors when you can understand Polish better. I didn't know I had any Polish ancestors until a few months ago when I discovered my mom is an NPE. Her biological father is Polish! His parents, my great grandparents are immigrants. This has been a huge shock to our family. I don't know that I'll ever feel comfortable tracing this line back any further. Talk about spelling! This Polish family has been spelled so many different ways since coming to America! For example, I have seen it spelled Moldoski and Moldrawski and many others. My favorite is one sibling's family just went with Molder! All his descendants are now Molders!

Good morning. Having done genealogy for a number of years I must, pretty much, agree with everything. My only disagreement is that where I do not know any first/last name I have to record it as "Unknown". It is a factor of my software, which assumes that the final name is the surname. I have a great many Unknown Unknown's. It works for me. I also, usually record such as Unknown m Unknown, for males, or f, if female or u if no idea. Regards & happy genealogy, Patrick

still beginner but thinking of starting from scratch. I have 2000 in database added from other trees but most are unverified and I know some birth and death dates and places are wrong. Do I spend time cleaning and trying to find which is true and which is false or start a new one. I know a lot more than when first started but still a newbie

My great great grandmother was married at least three times by the time she was 40 so my Great grandmother had a couple of full siblings and a couple of half siblings. Fortunately, HER grandfather was famous for starting the Pine tree cumberland presbyterian church in Awalt texas. My great grandmother was actually named in two publications. It help me know her father's name. But my dad's first cousin Darlene refuses to believe it, because she thought she heard someone call him Lewis at some point. My point is that sometimes the researcher will hit a dead end because of their own stubbornness.

My Grandmother was a Procunier. A cousin, David Charles Procuniar has a website that shows 110 different spellings for this family.

OMG YES! #1 jumping to conclusions, ie, newbie mistake. Long story short, i did a tree for a family that isn't mine. I found out after 3 months, circling back to mother's name, wrong staying point. I researched Pearl Rose Light, not Pearl Mary Light. Turns out, my birth mother was adopted. Also, great grandpa Thomas Freeman married Charlotte Andrews, and great grandfather Thomas Andrews married Charlotte Elizabeth Gibson. (Whose mother was Elizabeth Charlotte) or was it the other way round? 🤔 Lastly, spelling also depends on handwriting and transcription. Also,as a census taker, I ran into people who wouldn't take the time to spell; they didn't care.

I absolutely love this. I wish I had seen this because I have actually spent sleepless nights worrying about damage I had unwittingly done feeling proud of all the "good" I thought I was doing at the time.... There are so many frustrating teensy mistakes one can unwittingly make that actually have HUGE consequences! My biggest mistake is trusting first searches out of excitement, then others copy it and when I look again for supporting evidence, I find a record as my source which ends up being someone else copying what I recorded as fact. In fact, One mistake I made had become so loved and copied and shared that when I tried to remove it as being obviously wrong - others were angry with me and argued that it was so prevalent that it must be true (each family tree referenced had used mine as a source). I finally figured that idea of having a "theory tree" that is not shared, but only for me to mess around with.

Non-standard place names are a pet peeve of mine. I usually use a four-part place, no matter where the location is, and I always spell it the same, nor do I abbreviate names. I never enter street or farm names, as these really mess with the search systems. For the US, my format is: Town, County, State, United States of America For the UK, my format is: Parish, Hundred/Wapentake, County, Country For Ireland, my format is: Townland, Parish, County, Ireland INcluding the hundred/wapentake in the UK place name is something I find incredibly useful, as there can often be several places with the same name in one county. It also helps to visualise where in the county the parish is, as there can be over 100 parishes at times. It's easier to keep track like that. Townlands in Ireland are so very important, as the parishes tend to encompass several settlements, and the lack of variety among first names and surnames means often the only way to tell 5 different John Doyles apart is by their townland.

These were great tips, thank you. The spelling thing drives me bonkers! My 2nd great-grandparents immigrated from Norway and when I first started researching them....I was going bonkers! I knew nothing about the family because my great-grandmother divorced my great-grandfather when my grandmother was an infant and the poor guy was in France fighting In WWI. This is the case of just how many first names and last names can Norwegian ancestors have? I’ve figured much of this out now but they were all Spokley’s in the US. And Spoklie, Spokely, Spaakalie, Spoaklie and on and on. Most of the siblings spelled it their own unique way. So did Census workers and military personnel. “Bjørn” went by “Bear” and “Aslaug” was “Ann.” Then in Norway, no sign of any Spokley....because they were Bjørn Tjøstolvsson Underberg and Aslaug Larsdatter. 10yrs later I mostly have things figured out. But in the beginning? It felt like an insurmountable problem. I’m happy I didn’t throw in the towel though. It was, and still is, way too much fun! 😄

My wall was grandmother's that remarried . My grandmother who lived to 95 showing me an old photo of her great grandmother Taylor . Can't find anything until my 2x's grate grandmother who was her daughter with her maiden name on marriage certificate . Sloved that one .

How wd I handle an ancestor whose last name is spelled multiple ways, e.g. Cronkwright, Conkwright, and Krankheyt? I have a 5th great-grandmother of Dutch ancestry who went by Cronkwright some of the time and by Krankheyt at others. Her father followed the same practice. Records are sparse, so I haven't been able to determine which name either of them may have used more consistently. By the way, I agree with you abt not using Unk, MNU, and LNU. When I began working on my family history, I thought LNU was the last name of one of my 4th great-grandparents, and I cd not for the life of me figure out how to pronounce it. Stupid is as stupid does. LOL

Do you either have or would you consider making a video about who NOT to add to the tree? I am sure I have gone down a rabbit hole or two, perhaps because the spouse of a TRUE ancestor had such a [seemingly] well-documented tree that I went on an incredible tangent if that makes sense. I tend to operate on the notion regarding genealogy that when a person gets married, they marry the entire family, so to speak. Thanks for any guidance you can share!

People are wanting to link to famous historical figures: I have that problem with John Harrison inventor at two ancestry tree Websites, so I found one of the many census records gave a different birthplace that is the same as siblings leading me to building back to the correct family. I found, yesterday, a tree that may be related to John not on the direct ancestor line, but through his brother that has a painting portrait of my 7th great grandfather (John's nephew).

Have you any recommendations on how to document all the different spellings of one name in the tree? Especially if it is a surname?

i learned the best way to start a tree start with pedigree then start adding sibbling to each lineage then spouses then children and thats how you can relate your DNA matches. my ancestors are Peña both side on my moms side just like the Smiths and alot of my cousins in the US spell it Pena (they omit the ñ alt+145) or Trevino instead of Treviño that makes it hard to link them to trees. most records in mexico are hand written and faded but i have done the read before and after pages works like a charm. i use diff programs to zoom and make out words I m working on transcribing them to typed form them translate them to english for those n my fam that are too white washed :D.

The maiden name has been the biggest issue I’m having, especially because of the fact that we are from Mexico. Kept having issues with how to list the females in those lines and man, when you’re literally in a family with 260+ people and that’s just my moms, and 80% of those are all women it definitely makes for a banging the head on the desk type of moment 😂

I can't speak for other online trees, but I've found in Ancestry, if you leave the [maiden] surname blank, it makes life extremely difficult when trying to find the person. Likewise if you use '_____' - so whilst I understand that 'MNU' or similar usages aren't correct, it just makes life easier. One principal of genealogy is to record people by the name they were born with - ie, women with their maiden name. What are your thoughts when people prefix a man's name (usually) with 'Captain' or similar as they patently weren't born a captain, or adding the suffix 'Sr' as a man wouldn't be xxxxxx xxxxxx Sr until after xxxxxx xxxxxx Jr was born. Ouch when you said 'sz' was a beta; it decidedly isn't! it's an es-zett; they do look similar, but are different. ß vs β

Wouldn't it be helpful to add someone (temporarily) into your tree, whose data you are not quite sure about, just to watch which kinds of hints come up, that might help you verify?

Re names and their spelling, particularly in census records can be completely off the mark if the Enumerator spelled what he heard due to the accent and not what the actual name was. For me, I have Lay from Wiltshire in my tree...the name in the census for a particular year was Lloyd. Sometimes you have to take a really broad approach to finding families in records. Or Holmes instead of Ormes.

Unfortunately some sites don’t let you leave fields blank which is extremely frustrating

Inconsistant names are huge in my family line, especially once we're back to a point before they were on American soil. I see so many wonky or different spellings on census' and things. When I have to choose I use the most common spelling.

Lol, every point you make is so relevant to issues I have faces!! Name spellings! I have had uneducated relatives (not to mention cencus workers tried the best they could). We have "Jewetts" or "Jewards" or "Jewat" or.... It keeps life exciting for sure 🤪

What do you do when you try too find an ancestor you find records on them then they drop off records you can't find anything on them after a certain date?

I’m fortunate on my English side I descend from the nobility and on my Jewish Spanish side from Cohen priests. My Ashkenazic side mums mum is terrible to trace. I made one or two errors earlier on but corrected them

Just discoved your channel today....I was laughing and nodding my head at so many of the mistakes people make that I find beyond frustrating! Especially the maiden name issue!

several years ago my Uncle hired someone to research our Polish and Czech genealogy hit many dead ends because fathers name and or birthplace not listed on birth records. They did not look for siblings that may have had that information.

I am from India so I can't get any records. Although I have discovered my paternal 5x great grandfather it's impossible to go further up.

Make sure if a genealogist or therapist ECT is getting into your family history they arnt outright lying to you about the origins of your families surnames.I had that happen to me when I was a kid.

Please enable captioning for all videos.

Where do i start!... Lol. Yes, i have made them all of these mistakes in my journey and i want to share a couple of them with you.

I had a doosey. 2 men with the same name, born on the same day died on the same day. married a girl with the same name. both parents had same names. their 3 kids had the same name. One had a photo in Family search funeral hits, I added it to the one that was my uncle. His daughter spotted it and told me it wasn't her dad What a coinendence

Also some people got married more than once and we assume that they must be the parent of the child. So it's better to look at the birth record of the child to make sure who is the father and who is the mother and compare the dates with the marriages records...

Those mistakes are all to often made. I have been doing my family tree for at least a decade.

Hey everyone be aware that some imports may give you "unknown" even if you never use unknown. Also how do you handle someone's real surname if they were adopted?

I found a branch someone made that spans back the 1100s and they had a wife listed that was only 5 years older than their supposed child. That sure made me question the validity of the tree!

Same with me my mum and dad has last name smith but not realated

If you are a life long alcoholic, will this affect DNA results? And how?

I’ve linked to Charlemagne 4 times over May sound exciting but most of Europe is descended from him.

The worst mistake I see, is people copying what others have posted online, not caring if it's correct or not. Then others will copy the mistake, and soon it's spread to a couple of hundred trees. They don't take the time to notice their grandmother was born in England in 1856, then they find them in the 1860 USA Census, then in the 1870 Canadian Census, then in the 1880 UK Census.

That's the same last name of my mum's side of the family tree That sounds like my family tree

well I had to make a conclussion but still me and my family are 100% sure it was him because we did know his name his wife his herritage and the time his wife was born so we found a guy in Antwerp with exact the same name , same birth year as the woman we had and the same city. His name was uncommen in Belgium , but not even a few people with that name. The only people we find with that name in belgium was littarly people from our family so. I was only 70% sure , cause we didn't have his birth or dead year. I asked all my grand ant's and uncles and all of them wer 100% sure that this was the man we wer looking for so I believe them.

Yeah… I’ve made pretty much all of them…! And have spent the better part of the last year going back and cleaning things up…. Not fun…! I would also add not being led astray by the use of the same name, for multiple children within a single family… Prior to 1900, it was quite common, if a child died, that the name might be reused on the next child of that gender… early on I dismissed these instances as errors… and it was an unfortunate mistake.

Dates, dates, and dates. Birth, marriage and death. My mother has been told her father was born in 1902 but it was changed to 1900. I think he was actually born in 1900. Than her older bother (half-bother) said that their father married his last wife 5 days before my mother was born but what I found is that they married the year before.

I'm a little confused about one point. I understand leaving a woman's maiden name blank if you don't know it but 1) If she got married, isn't putting her married name better than leaving it blank? And 2) Shouldn't you always leave a woman's maiden name even if she got married, for consistency's sake? The field in Ancestry is always labeled "maiden name if woman" for that reason, no? It seems like you advise the other way around in the video. Thanks.

Hmm. So, you want a laundry list of my greatest hits, huh? Well, I talked about one of them in this blog: allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2019/09/52-ancestors-week-37-mistakes.html Basically, I thought this lady Rosa Stella Coppola was a Coppola. Turns out that Stella wasn't her middle name. It was her *LAST* name. Yeah, that was an epic fail. More details in the blog. I thought she was a daughter of Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato. Turns out Paolo was her uncle. Still family. Just in the wrong spot. Luckily I had help from a VERY understanding person about this mess. She is a cousin so she filled me in on some cool stuff like how Paolo's son Giovanni payed the way for Rosa Stella and her sister, Marianna to come to America. Very cool of the cousins helping each other out.

The spelling of last names.....Heymer, became Heimer, and that became Heimerl.

My ex wife looked up her family tree, found out they were still living in it

We’re all related anyways 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have 13 generations in the U.S.. I take a minimum of 2 sources. If I look at other trees I find a lot sources that dont site the DOB or DOD. I have correct once in awhile who the wrong information on my direct where I have a copy of the actual BC DC MC. I have correct i belong to SAR Society of the Cincinnati GSW1812 etc...

Got booted off! As l

Ancestry only allows dna with main tree, so a lot of research “clutter” is forced to be on there.

Sorry, but as someone who has been doing genealogy from childhood (about 65 years) I completely disagree with leaving surnames blank, that is the road to error and confusion. The reasons for this are simple, take a married woman who gives birth to an illegitimate child, if no surname is given the child may be assumed to be her husband's child, if you add Unknown as the surname it is clear that the child is not the husband's child. In the case of marriages one can come across the same scenario when one partner has the same forename but different surname, this may again lead to confusion and errors. Adding Unknown as name makes it clear the persons name is not the same Elizabeth or William but another William or Elizabeth. If that causes problems for the software then the software is poorly programmed and needs to be rewritten, computers are supposed to support humans not humans supporting computers. Cheers Guy Etchells

What are these "this"? lol

Eszett, not "Beta." - Danke

Who cares.😝😝😝